The Falling
by spheeris1
Summary: COMPLETED :: AU :: Spencer POV at least 99% of the time :: 'And right before Spencer Carlin’s world ended, she just wasn’t sure if her answers were as good as she wanted them to be.' :: Slight Christmas fic. ::
1. what you are

It's in the falling.

That's when it happens, when all those important questions get asked and you have seconds to answer them as truthfully as possible – _did you live well? Did you help others? Did you live up to your potential? Are you, or have you ever been, content with the life you've had thus far?_

And when your foot gets caught between forward and left behind, twisting your ankle and causing you to tip sideways, seeming to topple to the ground in slow-motion… that's when those questions pop up, annoying and profound – as most lessons are – and you try to answer them.

You try to answer and be as concise as possible… right before the world goes black.

_Did you live well?_

_I certainly tried to. I think so._

_Did you help others?_

_I've held open doors. I give to the Red Cross. I call my parents every Sunday. Is that what you mean?_

_Did you live up to your potential?_

_Maybe. I honestly don't know… _

_Are you, or have you ever been, content with the life you've had thus far?_

…_Mostly. I think. No one can be content all the time, you know._

It's in the falling.

And right before Spencer Carlin's world ended, she just wasn't sure if her answers were as good as she wanted them to be.

///

"Do you know why you are here?"

"Excuse me?"

"Must I **always** talk slowly with you new people?"

"I don't know. Must you always talk like an **ass**, too?"

"Now, now, everyone… calm down…"

She had been here for approximately five days.

The first day, well, she didn't say much. And she didn't feel much either. In fact, on that first day, Spencer Carlin wasn't sure of a damn thing.

Once someone actually **said** the words, her first coherent thought was '_it's not white or full of clouds, it's just… a room_'.

On the second day, she got a little mad. She felt ripped off somehow, like when you stay up all night for a big sale on Black Friday and some lady just steps in front of you, taking that strapless blue dress – Spencer felt like all she had worked herself up for was just snatched away, out of her control.

The third day found her quiet again, but for much different reasons than her initial first-day stupor.

She had to sit back and accept that her life – for all intents and purposes – was over back on Earth.

She had died.

And she had died stepping off a subway car, in New York and in the middle of November, by getting her heel caught in a crack and smacking her head against cold concrete. It was almost immediate, the blow knocking loose valuable wires in her brain and blood came pouring out of her nose.

A few twitches later and she was in a coma. A few **more** twitches and she was dead.

Just like that… Spencer Carlin ceased to exist.

But not really. She ceased to exist on Earth, but total disappearance from the universe? Nope, not by a long shot.

And the fourth day finally found her asking questions.

_**What**__ am I? Why are we in this room? We have a perfectly good coffee maker and, yet, we have no sugar or cream… what is that about?_

"Calm down? **Calm** **down**?! I seem to recall when **I **first got here—"

"When was that? A billion years ago?"

"Spencer, please, stop antagonizing him…"

"Hey, **he** started it!"

"C'mon guys, where's your holiday spirit? Just chill out…"

"Yes, listen to Michael, just relax. We are all getting a little heated here… So, let's all take a deep breath…" And Gabe proceeds to inhale and exhale like he is teaching a Lamaze class.

Spencer follows along, but continues to gaze coolly at Raphael – who, in turn, keeps glaring at her in between each breath taken.

"Now, to the business at hand, Spencer… do you know why you are here?"

"Because… I'm dead?"

"Well, yes, technically – but I mean in the grand scheme of things?"

"Listen, Gabe, I am processing this… **odd** turn of events the best that I can, but so far I've just seen this room and you three. If there is something more 'grand' than this, I'd love to know about it. Because right now, Heaven is about as great as a day at the office."

"I cannot **believe** that she is being chosen for this task!"

"Raphael, please—"

"Aww, is God downsizing this year? Did you get a pink slip in the mail?"

"You insolent little—"

"Alright, that's **enough**!"

Michael's bellow is pretty impressive and everyone seems to shrink in front of it, even Spencer herself.

She crosses her arms. Raphael taps his foot angrily. Gabe nods a 'thank you' to Michael.

"Spencer, you are being given a chance to reach true fulfillment and ever-lasting peace for your soul, which is why you are here today. It is a great honor to have the opportunity to save someone from a life of torment and destruction. Normally, as the year comes to a close, one of us is sent to Earth and we assist those in need—"

"Normally, it is **I** chosen to perform such a task."

"Yes, Raphael, we all know this…"

"…So, then, why choose me?"

"God works in mysterious ways, Spencer."

"That is pretty evident by the circumstances I find myself in right this second."

That comment makes Gabe chuckle and Spencer slides a grin the man's way.

Michael can be a bit intimidating and Raphael is, for lack of a better description, a little bit like a bitchy queen – _all huff and puff and hand gestures_.

But Gabe is all heart and soft smiles and Spencer – _sometimes_ – sees shades of her father in Gabe.

And it makes her heart ache as much as it makes it swell.

And there she goes again, thinking of her parents… wishing she could see them or let them know she is alright, that there is a heaven after all… _and it is some boardroom in the sky, what a cosmic let-down…_

"Once you do this, then the true realm of God's glory will be opened to you and you shall spend eternity in the garden – free from disease, free from desire, free from worry—"

"Okay, I get it. It's Disneyland."

"They stole the idea from us, you know?"

"Gabe, don't encourage her…"

"Sorry, Michael."

"Alright, so… let me get this straight… I go to Earth and fix someone's screwed up life and then I get to hang out in a garden for eternity? I mean, is that **it**?"

"…Well, yes."

Gabe nods happily and Michael gives her the thumbs-up sign and Raphael rolls his eyes, as he tends to do quite often. Spencer tries to picture it – a big and lush field full of every kind of flower… some white-haired guy in a robe, talking about how long it **actually** took to create the mountains and the canyons… harps and wings and such…

_Don't know if that is any more interesting than this place. Sounds like a fabric softener commercial. But, you know, with God… not that Snuggles bear…_

"Shouldn't I be in Hell?" Spencer suddenly asks and Raphael allows a dangerous smirk to pop up on his face.

"**I** think so. I think they made a mistake with you."

"Raphael…"

"Why would you even think that, Spencer?" Gabe questions.

"Well, I am a lapsed Catholic, haven't been to mass in forever. And I'm gay."

"Minor details in the grand scheme of things."

"This 'grand scheme' should really be pushed on Earth, you know… would save people a **lot** of heartache."

"Then how would anyone learn?" Gabe poses hypothetically.

"Sometimes the best lessons are those learned by getting hurt." Michael says in that sage-tone of his and Spencer sighs heavily.

And there she goes again, thinking of her own struggles back on Earth. She remembers those hard days in her youth, realizing she was different than other girls and the backlash she had to endure – the teasing, the insults, the taunting – and, at the time, it most definitely didn't feel like a good lesson to learn.

_I just felt alone. And scared._

And there was no angel telling her it would be okay or that it would get any better.

It would have been nice if God had let her in on this 'grand scheme' at the age of sixteen, when she **really** needed to hear about it.

"So, everything settled then?" Raphael asks in a bored manner.

"You ready, Spencer?"

And she looks at all three of them – Michael in his jeans and sweatshirt and scuffed-up sneakers… Gabe in his suit and with a rather jolly-looking Santa Claus tie… Raphael in a tight sweater of the brightest blue and nice slacks – and she wonders, once more, how she ended up here – thrust into the job of angel.

_Well, when you do something, Spencer Carlin… you go all the way, don't you?_

"As ready as I'll ever be. So, who am I helping?"

"Don't worry. You'll know."

"Wait, what do you—"

///

They let her keep her name.

And her face, her hair… basically they let her keep almost everything – from the way her laugh sounds to the fact that her voice is rough first thing in the morning…

As she found out, time had moved on at a much faster rate than how it felt up in the Heavenly offices.

For Spencer it was five days, whereas – on Earth – years and years had passed. The world was essentially the same as when she left it, though – there were still wars being fought and issues with the government and reality television taking over every station.

And Spencer did what any person might do when returned to the land of the living - she ignored her reason for being there and tried to find her family.

But when she kept calling the numbers she remembered and couldn't ever get through – busy signals or disconnection messages every single time - Spencer realized that you can never go home again.

_Especially when God is watching you. All very Big Brother of you, up in that garden…_

They gave her an apartment, a nice one with all the amenities – stainless steel appliances and granite countertops and a large television in her spacious living room.

They had keys to a car laid out on a desk and a day-planner with important information highlighted – such as what she does for a living (_assistant to the assistant… to the __**assistant**__ at some law-firm… so, a secretary I think_) and the fact that she is in California (_never got the chance to go there when I was alive, should be a nice change in scenery_).

And marked in bold letters, firm handwriting on the twenty-sixth of November, are the words:

"**Leaving Putnam & Barnes! Going to Davies, Davies & Lewis! New job!"**

She blows out a breath and walks to the window of her new home, the traffic moving below and the sound of the Pacific ocean in the distance.

And Spencer cannot even begin to fathom how this will all play out.

_Hope for the best, expect the worst… right?_

///

She works from eight in the morning until six or seven in the evening, fetching coffee and pulling up files and checking paper-work for typos and running to the library and so on and so forth.

And if Spencer Carlin ever gave a damn about the inner workings of the world of lawyers, well this would be a dream come true.

But she doesn't care. Not in the slightest.

And she is no closer to finding out who it is she is meant to help out either.

She has been here, in California and in this job and in this false life, for a week and a half and not a single solitary clue as to her target.

_I'd ask for a sign, but I know who is up there – you guys are pointless, you know? I hope you can me, Raphael… you are pointless!_

Picking on the angels from afar causes her to grin, but it does not solve anything.

She's met pretty much everyone who works here at Davies, Davies & Lewis – from Cory in the mailroom to Chelsea Lewis (_the 'Lewis' part of this establishment_) to the doorman named Irving.

She knows more about the lives of these people than she ever knew about her own mother or father – she knows about Ralph's brother who died in Vietnam and she knows about Sandra's trips to Costa Rica and she knows about how every temp worker here tries to run off with the lime green stapler… and how they all fail.

Spencer Carlin is a fount of knowledge about all of them.

But none of it matters.

Because none of them are 'the one' – that lost soul, that wounded bird… _that ticket to perpetual bliss that I am being forced to seek out…_

And what annoys her most of all is the fact that she now has a routine.

Spencer Carlin, an angel brought back to Earth, has a mundane routine like every other person.

_If I could fly, this would be so much cooler. Where the hell are my wings, eh? Talk about getting rid of that commute every day…_

But no, no wings for the newbie – just a lame guidebook on **'How To Be An Angel Among the Living' **– which she has read front to back and now uses as a way to kill offending spiders.

"C'mon guys, cut me some slack… just a name? Just a freakin' **hint**?" Spencer asks aloud, propped up in her nice bed while listening to her nice stereo system.

And she doesn't hear a response.

And she hopes they are watching her right now, because she is giving them the finger.

///

Ashley Davies.

Spencer has only caught her in glimpses, a flash of brown hair and eyes hidden by sunglasses as she breezes through the hallways.

The other Davies, one Raife Davies, has been met twice so far.

He is seems pleasant enough – _sometimes jovial, sometimes serious_ – but supposedly cracks the whip hard and Spencer is glad to not be the assistant to the assistant to the… she is glad to not be his secretary.

She mostly works for Chelsea and that suits Spencer just fine.

The woman is nice and does lots of pro-bono work on the side, has really interesting artwork up in her office – Chelsea is the kind of woman that Spencer would have been friends with in her 'old' life.

So, it is surprising when Chelsea kind of loans her out to Ashley one afternoon.

"Look, she really has poor taste in assistants and this case is a big deal to… listen, can you keep a secret, Spencer?"

And Spencer just nods her head in the affirmative, all at once curious about this rare show of gossiping from Chelsea and then not truly caring, just going along with her fake job in her fake existence.

"This is Ashley's last shot, okay? She is a good lawyer, she really is – **if** she is motivated. But her father really comes down hard on her and she tends to crack under the pressure… and screws cases up. He's threatened to give her the boot this time and I am going to try to prevent that. And that's where you come in, alright? Help her out in any way you can… for as long as you need to."

And like a light switch finally being flipped, Spencer Carlin finds the first true smile grace her lips since her return to Earth and all its unavoidable drama and all its iridescent charm.

"You've got it."

_Ashley Davies, eh? She's the one, isn't she? That's a sign… right?_

///

Ashley Davies is a whirlwind, indifferent one second and impassioned the next.

Her desk is an absolute mess and her files are haphazardly thrown about, making Spencer wonder if the woman decided to hire a monkey as her last assistant.

She doesn't listen to anything that anyone says – not at all.

If you suggest one thing, she'll do the opposite. If you agree with her, she changes her mind.

Spencer even doubts the woman's grip on reality when she goes off on a tangent about Chinese take-out and a stain on her thousand-dollar shoes… in the middle of a conference call with a potential client.

_And, of course, she is stunning. Like totally gorgeous… you know, for a crazy person._

Spencer Carlin was as gay as the day was long back in her 'old' life.

She tried to hide it, but couldn't. And she took the hits until she could move away from that small town in Ohio, until she could move to the city and join the ranks of all those that came before her – Spencer ran away from suburban shackles and found a new home in her own sexuality.

And being an angel hasn't altered that one bit.

She is as still gay as the day is long.

And Ashley Davies is very nice to look at, when you tune out the ranting the woman does on a daily basis or the biting comments she makes toward everyone – Spencer included.

_The way Ashley's hair likes to fall, curls catching onto the dying of the sun and over one eye… or the slant of Ashley's neck, smooth and tanned as she leans back in her leather chair…_

"Carlin? **Hello**? Earth to Carlin?"

"Oh, umm, sorry. Drifted off there."

"I don't pay you to 'drift off'. Got it?"

"Yea, I got it."

But Spencer rolls her eyes and taps her pen against the notepad in her lap and waits for Ashley to continue her diatribe.

She glances at her watch and then looks around quizzically.

_It is after seven. Like… way after seven…_

And she looks at Ashley again, who seems to be lost in her own thoughts, and Spencer rolls her eyes.

**Again**.

She's been working with Ashley for the past week, waiting for that pivotal moment where she will have to swoop in and save the woman – but, frankly, Spencer doesn't know how to save someone from their own rudeness or spoiled nature.

_I kind of thought it would be more serious. Maybe I was wrong… maybe she's not it…_

When the phone rings, it seems to make them both jump and Ashley shoots Spencer a look like it is her fault.

_Yea, I'm starting to think she is __**not **__it. Just an annoyingly beautiful lady who is a bit of a whack-job, that's all she is._

And Spencer tunes out the fight that Ashley Davies is apparently having over the phone lines, watching the way those brown eyes light up with indignation and anger – wondering what they might look like if they were ever happy or amused…

"Get out. Now."

The words are directed at Spencer and quite coldly.

So, she does as told – _and happily, I might add_ – and leaves the office.

She tosses her notepad down and grabs her coat, fully intending to walk out and get something to eat and then go home to her awesome bed.

But something stops her – _well, a combination of things really_ – and Spencer is frozen in an empty law-firm on a Thursday night.

First, she hears what sounds a lot like crying on the other side of that door she just walked out of.

Secondly, the sound of that crying makes Spencer's chest feel tight and she grips her jacket tightly in her hands – her body stuck in between going and staying.

And when Ashley barrels out of the office, seeing no one and nothing, running down the hall and into the stairwell…

…Spencer drops her coat and goes running after the woman, as if this is the very thing she was born to do.

_Or died to do, as the case may be._

By the time she catches up to Ashley Davies, the woman is flinging herself over the edge of this rather tall building they all work in and Spencer is reaching out as fast as she can – because this is no longer a game and this is what she is here to do… she is here to save Ashley Davies.

_And damn it all, I am going to. You are not dying on my watch, Davies!_

Her hand finds a wrist and she pulls up with everything she has (_which must be a lot, she feels as light as a feather_) and Ashley is back on the roof as suddenly as she was off of it.

Ashley is shaking violently now, those brown eyes wide and shimmering with still-falling tears.

And Spencer experiences the ultimate rush that is saving a life as she watches Ashley Davies promptly pass out from shock.

And even though she knows that this is just the first step, Spencer Carlin feels a sense of purpose that she just didn't have in that 'old' life.

And it feels good.

_Did you live well? Did you help others?_

_Maybe not then, but I intend to now. Does that count?_

///

TBC


	2. what you do

For just a moment, those miniscule seconds of time when one opens their eyes and forgets to throw the walls up to the outside world, Ashley Davies looks unbearably human.

A little bit like a child – wounded and terrified – all of it caught in her dazed fluttering of eyelids and in the innocent dilation of pupils.

And Spencer's breath gets caught in her throat. And Spencer's heart beats harder than it was previously.

But it is a swift kind of thing and then Ashley is bolting upright, pushing Spencer until she hits the floor and is sprawled on her ass – watching as Ashley flees the office and leaves the building and doesn't spare a single look back at the person who just saved her from a quite painful demise.

Spencer looks at her watch and it is midnight.

She used to call this the 'witching hour' when she was a kid, thinking of ghost stories and witches and such – allowing her mind to believe that there really were monsters under her bed and begging her parents to get her a nightlight… _a tiny beacon to guide me to safety…_

And she wonders, idly, if Ashley was ever scared of the dark.

She wonders if Ashley is scared of things that go bump in the night even now, if what she is running from is so bad that death seems like a good idea, if life is truly that bad to live for the woman who **seems** to have it all.

Her steps are measured to the parking garage as she is filled with these rambling thoughts – of her own childhood, of questions about Ashley's life, of time and of fear… but a hard voice halts her slow walk, an eerie echo in a mostly-empty space.

"If you tell anyone, I **will** fire you."

And Spencer looks at Ashley Davies, wound tight as a drum and glare like a head of thunder, but the smile is growing on Spencer's face anyway and she can see the confusion seeping out all over Ashley's stony façade, cracking that wall a little more.

"Your secret is safe with me." And Spencer taps the side of her nose, grinning and walking to her car with nary another glance spared for Ms. Davies.

"**Rule One of Engagement – Gain Trust by Keeping Your Word."**

She might use that book to keep her nice apartment free of bugs, but she really did read it.

And she recalls every line, every suggestion.

And Spencer Carlin is now an angel on a mission – she'll take any help she can in winning Ashley Davies over.

_Did you help others? Did you live up to your potential?_

_I am doing my best, right now… on both fronts. I am aiming pretty high, but it's worth it… right?_

///

Ashley watches her out of the corner of her eye.

Spencer can feel it no matter what is going on – during phone calls or during dictating, at breaks and when passing in the halls – every tick of the clock finds Spencer under surveillance.

And Spencer is watching Ashley, too.

She is monitoring Ashley actions, making sure there will be no more sky-diving to interrupt and sighs in relief every day that Ashley gets in her car instead of rushing the rooftops.

Ashley has kept her voice neutral these days, too. No more snapping whenever Spencer is there to take a letter or drop off a book or sitting down a cup of coffee (_black, no sugar… what a serious drink_).

Her voice is not warm, oh no, but it is no longer like a kick to the shins either.

Spencer considers this great progress.

Being a novice at this angel business, she isn't sure just how long she has to 'save' Ashley.

_Will it be days? Weeks? Possibly years? Is there time limit to the rescuing of one's soul?_

She has not heard a peep from Gabe or Michael – not even Raphael – though she is certain that they are keeping an eye on her.

It's like the probation period of a criminal sometimes.

Or that is what Spencer relates it to – and that makes her question, for the millionth time, why **she** was picked to be the one to do this.

_I mean, I am not a bad person… but an angel shouldn't think like that._

It is another late night and Spencer is pushing in files, taking out other files, sorting files and carrying files. It is dull and mindless work. She is humming some nameless tune that is stuck in her head, more for the noise than anything else.

"How did you do it?"

Ashley's voice is controlled and Spencer turns around, taking in the woman's bent head and studious attention to whatever document she is writing upon.

"Do… what? Sort your extremely messy file cabinet?"

There is the barest hint of a smirk at the edge of Ashley's mouth and Spencer takes a step forward, stacks of old cases against her hip.

"That as well. My last assistant couldn't find her way out of a paper-bag."

"Well, that's what all those years of college were for, you know…"

"**Rule Two of Engagement – Always Stay Open To the Subject."**

Spencer takes another step, leaning against the doorframe and Ashley leans back from her desk, crossing her arms and tilting her head – if only slightly.

The woman has her glasses on tonight, which is a silent reward for Spencer – she loves a woman in glasses anyway and… on Ashley Davies… it is quite the exquisite look.

"I suppose I should thank you."

"That depends… what are you thanking me for?"

"Keeping quiet."

"You asked me to, so I did."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

Ashley narrows her gaze and Spencer walks into the office fully, setting her load of paper-work down on Ashley's desk.

"I can't make you out, Carlin."

"What's to make out? I am your assistant. I am here to… uh, assist you."

And Ashley Davies smiles then – _a real honest to goodness smile at that _– and Spencer feels incredibly accomplished. And she smiles back.

And they are smiling at one another, even as Ashley stands up and leans forward and places herself in Spencer's personal bubble.

"I don't do this often, so don't get used to it… but… thanks for what you did, um, up there."

"…My pleasure."

Spencer can't help it, she whispers the words out and she is fixed on Ashley's eyes in front of her, the shifting of colors – brown and gold – and the tinge of rose to those burnished cheeks, the fullness of that bottom lip…

_And if I were not an angel, I'd just lean on in and kiss this woman. This would be breaking a rule I am sure. So, I can't do that. Nope. Won't do it. Attractive women mean nothing to me… not at all… I'm an angel and angels don't do such things…_

Ashley reaches out, slow and steady, placing her hand on Spencer's arm and giving it a squeeze.

Spencer looks at those long fingers and swallows hard, fighting back this sudden wave of want.

"You must be strong."

"…What?"

"You… pulled me up…"

"I go to the gym. A **lot**."

Ashley's eyes flash and, thankfully, it is in humor and not disbelief. She pulls away and Spencer inhales sharply, glad for the connection to be broken.

Because it is just clouding her head and she cannot afford to be muddled by pretty women.

_Or their devastating eyes. Or their nice face. _

"Go on home, Carlin. It's been a long day."

"You… are heading home, too?"

And Ashley knows what is being asked, Spencer can see it flood the woman's face and Ashley nods silently.

So, Spencer says good-night and rushes to her apartment and stays up most of the night just so she won't give in to this temptation of lust.

Because she is an angel.

And an angel shouldn't think like that. An angel shouldn't be overwhelming attracted to their charge.

Or want to kiss them, want to touch them…

_Right?_

///

TBC


	3. who you save

_**To quickly address this in the name of disclaimers and such – a reviewer said that this fic was a lot like a film called 'Unlikely Angel', so I went to IMDB to check it out… and the plots are disturbingly similar [lol], but let me state here – all similarities are purely coincidental. **_

_**My idea is one big Christmas cliché, to be sure… but this film was not a part of my clichéd thinking.**_

_**Now, time to carry on… **___

///

"You must be doing a good job."

"Hmm?"

"That's the third case Ashley has nailed this week. I hope you get a big bonus this Friday."

"Why would I get a bonus this Friday?"

"Where's your head, girl? It's Christmas next week. We all get a bonus of some kind."

"Oh. Riiiight. Christmas."

"Do you have plans, Spencer?"

"Umm… not really…"

And this is the awkward part, the divulging of information that is required amongst those one works with in order to seem 'normal'.

_Which I am anything but. It's not like I can just up and say, 'I'm dead actually, so no big plans for the holidays!' …Or could I? Just to see what kind of reaction I might get?_

Spencer looks at Chelsea's happy face and decides that that would be a bad idea, so she just smiles and nods. That is her answer to most personal queries, just a nod or a smile or an 'uh huh' – and then she leaves the room. Quickly.

"No folks flying in?"

"Nope."

"Just sticking to Cali?"

"Yep."

"Don't talk so much, Spencer, I can't get a word in edge-wise."

Spencer chuckles and Chelsea's smile grows wider as she grabs her coat and purse.

"Sorry. I, uh, am just not a big fan of the holiday."

"Hey, no need to explain. It's this big mass-market thing, full of commercialism and pandering to some out-dated notion of family structure…"

"…And you love it."

"Yea, I do." Chelsea laughs as she walks towards the revolving glass doors, turning back at the last minute to wave at Spencer.

"Just don't let me find out that you spent the whole of Christmas here, okay?" Chelsea shouts out as she pushes her way past the others leaving for the day and into the California late-day sunshine.

But Spencer might do just that – not because she could ever be considered a workaholic (_in life or death_), but she doesn't want to be in that nice apartment with all those nice things.

It is almost Christmas and Spencer Carlin would give anything to just go home – to pull up in the snowy drive of her parents' home, to sit in front of the fire and sip hot chocolate and listen to her brothers talk football. She'd love to watch the ice form as night falls and see her mother bustling around the kitchen, fretting over the ham and smacking her father's hands away from the freshly baked rolls.

And there would be the largest tree ever in the living room, the wonderful smell of a Fraser fir and with a ton of white lights…

"Penny for them?"

"They cost more than that."

"Ah, the perils of inflation."

"You can still afford to pay for it."

Spencer can actually **hear** Ashley's smirk and it sends a happy chill down her spine.

They don't talk… _not really_… they just trade a jab or two. They banter during the work-day – brief and amusing quips and then nose back to the grindstone.

It is subtle. It is tentative.

_It is flirting, Spencer. Just admit it. You are flirting with the woman you are here to save._

And Spencer, sometimes, thinks the woman is returning the favor.

There are times when Ashley's gaze lingers a little longer than necessary, brown eyes stuck somewhere decidedly below Spencer's face – but when Spencer looks over, Ashley is staring out the window or glancing at some paper-work or rattling in a desk drawer.

There are times when Ashley's voice grows so warm and low, cascading into Spencer's ears and it might be about a phone call that needs to be made… but it sounds like it is about **so** much more.

"**Rule Three of Engagement – Be Involved, But Not Too Involved." ***

***In times of trouble, call 555-1212**

But Spencer is holding out in calling that number, not wanting to be chewed out by Michael.

_Or chastised by Gabe. _

_Or hear Raphael say something snarky._

Because she is still focused on the challenge at hand – saving Ashley isn't just about being there when the woman wants to swan-dive off of tall buildings.

It is about solving the problem, fixing the issue…

_Not 'flirting' her to a happier place. That's just wrong. I think._

And while their working relationship is now at a good place, it's not like Ashley has been confessing any deep dark secrets or revealing the reason for her torments.

Of course, when Chelsea decided to 'lend' Spencer out, she learned the little tidbit about Ashley having a hard time with cases and how that was – apparently – putting a strain on the father/daughter dynamic of Davies, Davies & Lewis.

Spencer has only seen them interact once… and it wasn't pretty.

In fact, it was downright harsh.

Raife Davies was, for want of a better description, ripping Ashley a new one.

_And the woman took it like one who is used to being dressed down._

Spencer even thought she caught an errant tear break free and run down Ashley's face, but then the woman turned her wrath on Spencer and shouted to be 'left alone and cancel all my appointments!'.

Of course, that was before Spencer kept Ashley from plummeting ten stories.

_That was before she thanked me, in her own special way, for keeping her alive._

But it's not like Spencer just forgot what occurred that night.

She just isn't sure how to broach the topic and not kick off Ashley's suspicions.

Because if there is one thing Spencer has learned it is that Ashley Davies trusts no one.

They joke and they even flirt with one another (_I __**think**__, I mean, it could just be me…_), but Ashley still watches Spencer's every move and Spencer won't flatter herself so much as to think it is all because of a possible attraction.

Ashley Davies watches her to see if she'll slip up and betray her confidences, blab her moment of weakness to the press or blackmail her for money.

And Spencer wants to know why the woman would even ponder that outcome in the first place.

_Who fucked you over, Ashley Davies?_

///

"Ashley, you have to be there. It is expected."

"Not this year, alright?"

"Why not? You've not given me a **single **reason—"

"Why would I **want** to be there, mother? So you can pester me about Aiden or father or how to go about suing your latest ex-husband?"

"Ashley, you are being unreasonable. As usual."

"Sweetness and light to the very end, mother."

There is a beat of silence. A shallow breath.

"Is your father still seeing that whore?"

"If you mean Cassandra, then I don't know."

"I cannot believe he has willed over those assets to her—"

"Did you think it would go to you? **Really**?"

"I am the mother of his child. I deserve it."

"…Please, just go. I have work to do."

"I **still** don't know why you are doing this lawyer thing anyway, Ashley. A woman your age should just be living it up, like Kyla…"

There is the distinct sound of shuffling papers. And a heavy sigh.

"Fine. I'll go. Be there at seven, Ashley."

"I won't be."

And that is when Spencer jumps back guiltily, diving behind the fake pink Christmas tinsel-tree that someone put up at the corner of the main hallway and watching a very put-together woman walk away.

And then it is all quiet in the Davies, Davies & Lewis law-firm.

Because it is Christmas Eve and everyone else is at home – with family or friends – everyone except Spencer Carlin and Ashley Davies.

They had traded smiles during the day and they had poured over documents over some land civil suit – Ashley had on Spencer's favorite outfit this time (_that simple white top, first two buttons undone and the black pencil skirt…_) and Spencer paid close attention to the fact that Ashley allowed their hands to brush against one another about six times during the day (_I am so sad, really I am…_).

And then Spencer hears it – so much like the first time – Ashley's quiet sobs on the other side of the office door. But as the seconds tick by, and Ashley doesn't burst forth, Spencer takes a deep breath – steeling herself for this important task.

"**Rule Four of Engagement – Be There In Times of Need."**

"Ms. Davies…?"

And Ashley looks up, tear-soaked and shattered, not even blinking at being caught.

"Would you b-b-believe… that I have something… in m-m-my eye?" Ashley stutters out and it takes all of Spencer's willpower to not race over to the woman, to not just gather her up and make the pain go away.

Instead, she plays this Ashley's way.

"I... uh, I hate it when that happens. Let me take a look… okay?"

And Ashley nods, wiping at her face roughly and not saying another word.

And Spencer pretends to look in troubled eyes for something that isn't truly there.

_At least, not in the way we are speaking of… isn't that right, Ashley?_

"I think you are all good, Ms. Davies."

"G-G-Great. I can't go to a party looking like this, c-c-can I?"

"Sure you could. You'd really stand out in a crowd this way."

And Spencer takes another big step, letting her hand stay upon Ashley's face and cup the wet face, brushing her thumb against the skin.

And the woman smiles… and then… she falls apart.

And Spencer Carlin is there to catch her this time as well.

_Did you live well? Did you help others? Did you live up to your potential?_

_I think I am getting closer every day. I really am…_

///

TBC


	4. who you want

Spencer had eaten some pretty good Thai food back in her 'old' life – there was this hole-in-the-wall around the corner from her place in New York, open twenty-four hours a day and ran by the most stone-faced woman Spencer had ever met… but the food was dynamite.

_But this is some damn good Phat Thai. Mmmmm…_

She must have actually made that appreciative sound and not just thought it, because Ashley is chuckling at her.

And Spencer grins happily in reply, not at all self-conscious in front of this woman.

_This woman who now has her hair down fully and who is making the act of eating some Miang Kham look incredibly sexy…_

If you had told Spencer that she would be spending Christmas Eve at a law-firm with a hotter-than-hell lawyer while they ate Thai food… well, she might have laughed in your face.

Add on to that the fact that Spencer is actually dead and an angel on a mission to keep said-lawyer from ruining her life… well, Spencer might have had you locked up for insanity had you told her that one.

But it is all true.

_Surreal, but entirely true._

Once Ashley stopped crying and was composed enough to notice that Spencer was holding her, the woman jerked back and stood up – eyes a little wild and chest heaving, as if she had just realized a horrible blunder and could never take it back.

_She looked almost frightened… as if showing any emotion is a bad thing, a punishable thing…_

"Everything is okay…" Spencer said calmly, trying to diffuse the situation before it blew out of proportion.  
"What the hell do **you **know? Why are you even **here**?"

"You said there was something in your eye, Ms. Davies. I was trying to help."

"Well… **don't** in future… got it?"

It was all bluster and bluff, but it raised Spencer's hackles and she decided to be done with the 'nice' side of her angelic duties. It was time for some tough love.

"I guess I should have let you jump then, hmm? Would **that** have been better?"

"If it would have saved me from this conversation, then yes!"

"Oh, poor you… it's **so** hard being rich and from a respected family… blah blah blah…"

"Yea, well, what the fuck do you know? You are just some pointless temp, just a waste of space and I could get rid of you right now."

"Then do it."

"I can, you know, I **can** do it…"

"Oh, I know. I mean, it must be difficult for you to imagine that someone might give a damn about whether you live or die… you'd much rather sit here, alone and wallowing in your self-pity, then accept someone **caring**… am I right?"  
"…You don't know a single thing about me."

"I know all I need to know about you. You are terrified of someone seeing you like this, of seeing you vulnerable and so you try to push everyone away… but it is you who ends up feeling lost and desperate—"

"Shut **up**."

"—and you try to kill yourself, like it will solve everything… I mean, you tried to **kill yourself**! Like you are worth nothing more than that—"

"I said **shut up**!"

"Well, I'm not **going to**! 'Cause you are worth more than that, more than just being some statistic and blood on the sidewalk… and if you weren't such a **bitch** you'd realize it!"

"**Rule Five of Engagement – Avoid Antagonism As A Tool."**

It could have gone really wrong after that and Spencer felt her false blood run cold at her words, all too late in recognizing how far she went and that she might have blown her only outing as an angel.

Ashley appeared slightly frozen in front of her, somewhere between shock and anger – a place that most people know as the 'eye of the storm'.

And Spencer braced for the onslaught – _getting fired or getting slapped or both… at the same time…_

And as Ashley came closer to her, Spencer felt her shoulders go tense and her teeth sink into her bottom lip – a nervous habit from that 'old' life she used to live.

But the slap didn't happen. Ashley was not two inches from her face, hands on her hips and head cocked to the side – watching Spencer like one studies an oddity or a freak of nature.

It went on for so long that Spencer almost cracked, ready to sprint from this office and tell Gabe to take her back to the boardroom in the clouds.

But Ashley's voice put a stop to those thoughts.

"I think you might be the craziest person I've ever met."  
"…Probably so."

"No one has ever said that to me."

"The, uh, last bit…?"

"Oh, no, I've been called a bitch since I was sixteen."  
"Ah, good to know I am not the first then…"

"I **really** can't figure you out at all, Carlin."

"That's the second time you've said that."

"Because it is maddeningly true."

"So… no one has ever said that other stuff to you…?"

"…No."

"I mean every word, Ms. Davies."

"It's funny… because… I believe you. And you might as well call me Ashley. I think we are **well** past anything resembling 'professional'."

"So do I still have a job?"

"At least for the rest of tonight."

"I can live with that."

And Ashley gave her one of those rare genuine smiles – _the kind that crinkles the woman's nose and lights up those eyes…_

_Screw rule five. It worked. Go me!_

///

So, they did what was left of work and that party – the one that Spencer overheard about and Ashley claimed she had to go to – was forgotten and they ended up ordering food.

It was Ashley suggestion, a stack of take-away menus tossed onto the desk and the phone already poised in Ashley's hand.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking… I bet you've got some plans tonight…"

"Nope."

"…Really?"

And Ashley's truly confused face was as attractive as all the others to Spencer.

So, Spencer just nodded and smiled in response.

And now they are eating and exchanging small pleasantries, like 'how is it?' and 'try some of this if you want' – which Spencer does, enjoying the spicy and sweet flavors mingling on her tongue… and the fact that Ashley fed it to her, plastic fork hovering before Spencer's lips.

_Does she even have a clue as to how sexy she is…?_

"Let's play a game." Ashley states suddenly. And Spencer swallows her bite of food, shoving all sorts of really inappropriate thoughts out of her head.

"…O… kay…"

"You've certainly seen me at my worst, so now I want to know some stuff about you."

"To even the playing field?"

"Just curious about my guardian angel."

Spencer chokes on her sip of water, coughing and sputtering and not even able to enjoy the sensation of Ashley patting her back.

"You alright?"

"Oh… yea… just fine…"

"So you up for twenty questions?"

"Uh, yea. Go right ahead."

"**Rule Six of Engagement – Only Reveal What Is Good For the Best Outcome."**

"Where did you grow up?"

"Are you just checking up on my resume? Making sure I am who I say I am?"

"I have my F.B.I. dossier on you, don't worry."

Ashley's grin takes the seriousness out of the comment and Spencer rolls her eyes, pushing her food away and tucking her legs underneath her. She watches as Ashley settles more fully on the floor, leaning against the desk and legs stretched out – shoes off and arms crossed.

"Ohio."

"Do you miss it?"

"I miss my parents and brothers… I miss them a lot."

"You must love them very much."

"I do. But that wasn't a question, more of a statement."

"True."

"I'll let it slide for now."

"How nice of you… so why did you come all the way out here to L.A.?"

Spencer thinks about making up some elaborate story to explain her move from one side of the States to the other, but decides that a variation of the truth is better than outright lying.

_Fact is… I don't want to lie to Ashley. She needs someone she can trust. I __**want**__ to be that someone. I can't tell her everything, but… a little bit of honesty will go a long way, I think._

_For both of us._

"I went to New York first."

"Really?"

"Yep, wanted to see the big city and break away from the suburban way of life. I… didn't want to be just another woman with a picket fence and two kids."

"A rebel with a cause, eh Carlin?"

"…Call me Spencer."

Ashley's gaze shifts once more, going from interest to something far warmer… something so human and delicate and pure… Spencer almost stops breathing.

_Which would really be something since I am not even alive!_

"Okay, **Spencer**… did you find what you were looking for in New York?"

"Most of the time, yes."

"But you decided to come here?"

"Yes, well, I… needed to do something… more meaningful with my life, I guess."

"'More meaningful'?"

"…It's hard to explain."

"Fine, we'll come back to that one."

And Ashley winks, to which Spencer smiles gratefully.

"Favorite color?"

"Green."

"Top 40 or Indie?"

"Jazz."

"Well, aren't you full of surprises…"

"You better believe it."

"…I do."

They stare at each other just a second longer than is warranted, then they both look away and clear their throats.

"Umm… what time is it?"

"Is that one of your questions or just a general inquiry?"

Ashley blinks and then laughs out loud – a joyous sound that Spencer relishes hearing and is glad to have brought about. The woman then cranes her neck and lets out a whistle.

"It's almost midnight."

"By almost you mean…?"

"Like a minute away."

Spencer doesn't second guess it, she just goes with it – she was like this in that 'old' life, too… impulsive and goofy, always considered the 'kid' of her group of friends and co-workers… always the one dressing up still for Halloween, still decorating her place in too much red and green for Christmas…

She grabs Ashley's hand and tugs the woman up, pulling her along quickly.

"Spencer?"

"Hmm?"

"What are you doing?"

They are out in the main hall and Spencer is rushing to Amelia's desk – the stern lady who sits out front and gives the evil eye to all the UPS men, but always keeps a bowl of Hershey's Kisses hidden… _and shares with a select few_… and Spencer grabs a handful, forcing some into Ashley's unoccupied hand and keeping the rest within her own empty hand.

Then she is rushing them back to the pink Christmas tree, making sure Ashley is directly opposite her.

The woman is staring at her like she is perfectly mad, which only serves to make Spencer feel giddy.

"Close your eyes."

"What?"

"C'mon, just do it…"

"…Fine."

And Ashley does it, not putting up a fuss like Spencer might have expected. She allows herself a moment to look at the woman, to enjoy the view of an untroubled Ashley Davies… _and boy is it nice_…

She slips one piece of candy into Ashley's empty hand and leans close, placing her mouth next to the woman's ear – noting the scent of Ashley's skin (_lavender and mint_) as she does so and somehow manages not to swoon.

"Merry Christmas, Ashley." Spencer whispers and, before she can fully step back, Ashley's eyes are open and on her – pinning her as effectively as wall against her back might.

She watches those brown eyes track downward and to the red-foiled bit of chocolate that Spencer placed in Ashley's palm – then they move upward once more, looking so deeply that Spencer feels almost exposed… she feels totally revealed and easy to read and it makes her tremble uncontrollably.

"There's another first…"

Ashley's voice is soft and Spencer almost doesn't catch the comment.

"…What?"

Ashley's answer is a lot better than a piece of candy, though.

Because, quite without warning, the woman tilts her head and presses her lips to Spencer's.

It isn't the kind of kiss that sets the world on fire, not by any means.

It is sweet and it is almost innocent… and yet… Spencer feels it all the way to her toes and her body tingles in the most delicious way.

And when Ashley pulls away, oh so slowly, those brown eyes are just a little dazed as well – like when you wake up from a good and seemingly real dream… the kind you don't want to see end…

"Merry Christmas, Spencer…"

_Are you, or have you ever been, content with the life you've had thus far?_

_I am pretty damn content right now. Can we just stop here…?_

///

TBC


	5. why you feel

"I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me—"

"It's okay…"

"—I mean, I do **not** normally do things like that—"  
"Seriously, it is just fine…"

"—and we barely know each other, which adds this whole other weird element to me doing… what I just did—"

Spencer reaches out and places her fingertips against Ashley's mouth, ending the run-on sentence.

"You are rambling and not listening at all. So, while you are silent… it's **okay**. I don't mind what you just did."

"You… don't?" Ashley asks, sounding slightly muffled and eyes blinking rapidly.

"Nope."

"Oh. Okay."

Spencer removes her fingers from Ashley's lips and smiles happily at the woman, grabbing the Hershey kiss from Ashley's hand and opening it and then offering it up.

"Now, eat your Christmas gift before I do."

Ashley blinks some more and leans forward as if entranced, stopping just short of the chocolate treat poised between Spencer's index finger and thumb.

Blue eyes on brown, just staring for endless seconds…

"…Who **are** you, Spencer Carlin?"

"You, uh, just said my name."

"I can't figure—"

"Me out, I know… why don't you stop trying and just accept that an amazing lady has fallen into your lap… and she has candy…"

And Spencer watches mutely as Ashley's tongue snakes out, just barely sliding over Spencer's fingers and takes the Hershey kiss away. She watches as Ashley's eyes close and the woman lets out a little pleased moan.

_Holy… mother of… umm, okay… how much candy did I steal from Amelia's bowl? How many times can I get Ashley to do that?_

"You're drooling."

Spencer coughs suddenly and backs away, feeling her face flush rather quickly.

_And Ashley's confident smirk __**isn't**__ helping matters._

"So, I am right in thinking that you've been checking me out these past couple of weeks?"

"…Maybe…"

"Just maybe, hmm?"

"…More like, you know, absolutely."

"I like your candor. It's refreshing."

"I like you in that top."

Ashley grins, bringing her hand up and pushing back a strand of Spencer's hair – letting a touch or two linger before lowering her hand once more.

"You, uh, had… it was kind of in… your face…"

Now it is Spencer's turn to grin knowingly.

"I think **you've** been checking **me **out."

Ashley ducks her head and steps lightly past Spencer, her voice but a wisp of air against Spencer's ear before the woman goes back into the office.

"…Maybe."

_Oh, I think __**definitely**__, Ashley Davies…_

///

Somewhere around one in the morning, it seemed to come as a mutual decision that neither one of them were going home.

Spencer suggested an all-nighter and Ashley actually agreed.

They raided the third floor snack machine and Spencer swiped Craig's (_the mailroom guy who has a super crush on me, so I don't think he'll mind_) radio.

She turned it to Christmas music and she turned it up loud, even when Ashley looked less than enthusiastic.

"Let's continue the twenty questions game." Ashley said in-between bites of a Snickers bar.

"Okay, but I want to ask questions too."

"Fine by me."

"Can I go first?"

"By all means…"

"Why are you a lawyer?"

"The money."

"Really?"

Ashley polishes off the candy bar and proceeds to lick her fingers of any remaining chocolate goodness, watching Spencer the whole time… and it almost distracts Spencer from their little game.

**Almost**.

"**Rule Seven of Engagement – Be Ever Vigilant."**

"Stop teasing me and answer the question."

"Oh **fine**, have it your way… I don't know, I guess… because of my family."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, you know my father is a lawyer and I wanted to, you know, follow in his footsteps."

"Do you **like** being a lawyer?"

"…Sometimes. Does anyone really love what they do for a living **all** the time?"

"If you do what you are passionate about, then yes."

"So you love making my coffee and fetching my documents?"

"I certainly do."

"You are an odd one, Spencer."

"Odd, but cute… right?"

"Is that one of your questions or just a general inquiry?"

"Ha ha ha…"

"Either way, the answer is yes. Odd, but cute… very much so…"

And they grin at one another. Again. In fact, they do quite a bit of that as the night wears on to dawn.

Ashley asks more questions about life in Ohio and about Spencer's brothers and all the random stuff that will pop into a head that is somewhere between a sugar-high and a lack of sleep.

Spencer, though, stays sharp and – while she does ask some frivolous questions as well (_like favorite song of the moment or most embarrassing incident… which Ashley swore her to secrecy about after telling_) – she asks the things that **need** to be asked as well.

Because, despite her own warm and slightly fuzzy feelings for the woman, Ashley Davies is still the same person who tried to end her life.

And Spencer Carlin won't let that ever happen again.

_Like I said before, not on my watch, Ashley…_

"What are you passionate about?"

"Music, I suppose."

"As in…?"

"Oh, I used to have that daydream of fronting a band or something. Very L.A. of me, I know."

"Why didn't you pursue that?"

"…Uh, well, I wanted to do this instead, the law thing."

"Did… did your father want you to do this, to join the business?"

"In the beginning, sure."

"What do you mean?"

"Look, don't play naïve with me, Spencer… I **know** what everyone around here says about me. They all say that I am only here because of being a Davies and that my father won't fire me because I am his daughter. And you know what? They are right. I am a crap lawyer and, if not for my last name, I'd be out on my ass."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Not really."

"You just won three cases, Ashley. You **know** what you are doing out there."

"That's rare. I just… I don't have whatever it takes to be a good lawyer. I never have."

"Is that what you two fight about all the time?"

Ashley's eyes go a little hard there, as if warning Spencer to tread lightly.

And while Spencer wants to respect that boundary clearly showing, it is her job to push beyond it.

Because the longer that Ashley Davies tries to keep the bad stuff at bay…

… _the closer she'll be to the edge of whatever sky-rise that will have her…_

"…Not all the time, no." Ashley bites out and then looks away.

Spencer shifts closer, deciding to sit beside Ashley – shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip – and she leans her head back against the desk.

And Ashley doesn't move away.

"My mother used to really get on me about things, especially concerning… my extreme interest in other girls. She'd break out the bible and quote scripture. It made me feel so… unloved, so unlovable. And it drove me away. All I could see was her face, condemning me, and I had to run… I could never be what she wanted me to be.

And even now… **even now**… I wonder if she ever saw who I really was and learned to love that person, as is…"

Spencer's voice dries up and she can feel Ashley's gaze on her like a spotlight – and it hits her all too late that the words she spoke were in past-tense, but she can't take it back… and if Ashley notices, she doesn't say a single thing about it.

It was like Spencer's heart cracked open in an attempt to help another… and it just brought up her own life, that one she used to have and that one left unfinished in so many ways – the life she lost on cold stone, somewhere in New York, years and years ago…

And Spencer is crying suddenly.

And Ashley is timidly wrapping her up in a warm embrace.

After that, they don't really move away from one another for the rest of the early morning hours of Christmas.

///

"Why did you…?"

"Why did I… what?"

"Why were you going to jump?"

It is almost three in the morning and the music is playing low now.

Ashley tossed two blankets and a pillow from a closet, claiming that this 'isn't the first holiday I've spent here' and Spencer has to clench her hands into fists because that knowledge is like a wound.

"I'd had enough."

"Enough of living?"

"Something like that. I was just so damn tired. Sometimes… I still am."

"Why?"

"…I never seem to do the right thing, you know? I always seem to let someone down."

"Like… your father?"

They are laying on the floor, only one light on, facing one another – Spencer's elbow is softly pressed against Ashley's upper arm and Ashley's foot is overlapping Spencer's own – and they are underneath the two blankets, they are sharing the one pillow.

_It's the most serious sleepover I've ever had. But… I think it is safe to say… that it is the best as well._

"Like him. Like my mother. Like everyone."

"You've not let me down."

"…Just give it time."

"I could give you centuries, Ashley, and I don't think you would ever let me down. Not ever."

Ashley's sleepy eyes smile before her lips catch up, but it spreads out like a wave – from eyes to lips to the heat coming off her body and Spencer feels as good as she did when pulling Ashley back from the darkness that night not so long ago.

_I can save you. I really can. I know it. I am going to __**save **__you, Ashley. I think… I think it is what I was meant to do, even before I ever met you…_

"I've never done this."

"What?"

"Opened up like this, not to anyone."

"I'm glad you chose me."

"Me, too."

///

Somewhere between four and five, they must have fallen asleep.

Or rather, Ashley fell asleep and Spencer drifted – because she can't truly sleep.

She can act it out and she can close her eyes… she can 'drift', but nothing more.

Angels are the weary ones – awake while the rest of the universe nods off, keeping watch as humans dream the night away.

But every time the sun lowers, Spencer finds her eyes shutting and her body curled up in that nice bed in that nice apartment.

It is a habit she refuses to break.

Same with eating and drinking – two things she doesn't need to do at all – but it reminds her of living and that is a bittersweet pleasure.

It is a habit, pure and simple.

And she wonders if her feelings are the same way – if all she feels is like muscle memory, a phantom thing that is not really there.

Does she really miss her parents and brothers? Does she really feel road rage as she drives to work every morning?

Or is it all a habit, a thing she is so used to feeling… that she just can't let go of it?

Ashley stirs behind her and Spencer feels the fluttering of a palm against her stomach, feels the pressure of a body against her back and the sensation of hot air against the back of her neck…

And it feels so real. It feels so much like being alive again.

_It feels amazing. Completely and utterly amazing._

"**Rule Eight of Engagement – Do Not Forget Why You Are An Angel and Why Are On Earth Again."***

***In times of trouble, call 555-1212**

_And it is so easy to forget, isn't it? So damn easy…_

"…The sun will be up soon."

"Hmm."

"That is one thing I am glad to be alive for. There is nothing better than a sunrise in California, the way it slowly crests along the sky…"

"Sounds lovely."  
"It is."

They are silent after that, Ashley not moving away and Spencer staying right where she's been for the past hour or so. They watch dawn approach, orange and yellow pushing at dusky blue and black.

And Spencer feels the softest of kisses graze her cheek.

And she wants so badly to just fall right into it all, to just forsake everything and stay right here – with Ashley.

_Oh God, I am in trouble._

"Thank you."  
"…For what?"

"For all of this. For… being you."

"You mean for being your crazy assistant that you can't figure out?"

Ashley laughs and it shakes Spencer's body slightly.

"Yes. And for… listening, for caring, for… for giving me the best Christmas I think I've ever had."

And the sun is rising now, fast and high and wide across the canvas that is California – and it is Christmas, one without snow and ice and all the things that Spencer has ever associated with the holiday… It is Christmas in this office, two blankets and one pillow and Thai food and candy wrappers…

And so they kiss.

And this time, with rays of light beaming in on through the multitude of windows, Spencer knows they have set the world on fire.

///

_Did you live well?_

_No, not really. But… it's never too late to try… is it?_

///

TBC


	6. why you fight

Raife Davies stands at the door, a silent sentry – light eyes to match his light hair, so opposite both of his daughters, sticking out against all this expensive mahogany wood in the early morning of Christmas.

He always does this, goes in when the place is quiet and fills out each check by hand and places them in the envelopes – it is his way of keeping the workers happy, keep them coming back year after year.

It is the personal touches that make people loyal, Raife learned that so long ago – it worked on him when he was a wild child and a hot-head… trying to take on the world and save it at the same time…

_Someone stepped in and cooled me down, helped me see things differently. It is the only reason I have made it this far._

For him, it was a teacher or two – men who gave a damn and steered him in the right direction.

It was his first boss at that old law-firm, who gave him chances when no one else would and knocked him down when he deserved it.

And, for a little while, it was Christine and his family – a world he carved out and that he built, reflected in their eyes whenever he came home from work.

But time takes its toll and hours spent away chip at the foundations you set up… and then you wake up, with a lover and not your wife.

And your wife doesn't care just so long as you keep her bank account full.

And your children can't look at you, whether from shame or anger… _or so many other things_… and you are not sure what happened.

Raife Davies stands at the door to Ashley's office, sees his daughter on the floor and covered in blankets – the sun beaming in upon her brown hair and making it shine, the dawn stripping away all the harshness from her face and Ashley looks like a child again – peaceful and asleep… and Raife feels it like a knife in his chest.

_She spent Christmas here._

Not alone, though, because Raife trails his gaze over to the right and there is a waterfall of blonde hair, so bright… _like a halo_… and he blinks several times until it dims, until he can see the cut of a woman's face… until he can see blue eyes staring right at him.

And it startles him, this look from this woman, so much so that he steps back and shuts the door – a soft click in an otherwise empty building.

And he walks with unnerving purpose to his own office, as fast as he can… because he feels like…

_I feel like I've just been sucker-punched. And I don't know why._

But he can't block out distinct sound of footsteps following him, sticking with him all the way to his door.

Raife Davies takes a deep breath and turns around, back to clear blue eyes and disheveled locks of yellow – to a pretty young woman still in her work clothes, bare-foot.

"Must run in the family."

"…Excuse me…?"

"You are here on Christmas and so is Ashley."

"Oh, uh… well, I guess so. I like to do the bonuses myself."

"And that's what you are going to do right now, hmm? Fill out some checks for all your employees and… then what?"

"What do you mean?"

"After you do this, what next? Go home?"

"Not that it is any of your business, Ms…?"

"Carlin. Spencer Carlin."

"Ah yes, you assist Chelsea, am I right?"

"Yes. And your daughter."

"I can see that **quite** well."

He watches as this Spencer Carlin rolls her eyes and Raife thinks – for just a moment – that of all the people his daughter has dragged into the fray… _the lovers, the dealers, the thieves and the liars_… that this one might not be too bad.

"She won three cases, you know."

"I do."

"Does she get a bonus?"

Raife laughs just a little and opens his door and walks right in, expecting this Spencer Carlin to follow him in. And he is not disappointed.

"No. She is a partner. That is reward enough."

"Ah yes, **what** a reward… sleeping on the floor of her office on Christmas Eve… who needs a bonus, right?"

"Okay, Ms. Carlin, let's cut through the bullshit, shall we? You've got some axe to grind… did Ashley complain some to you and now you feel the need to defend her, is that it?"

This Spencer Carlin crosses her arms and glares and it would be amusing – under normal circumstances – but something in Raife's body keeps saying that this girl isn't to be trifled with.

_At least not too much. I mean, I am Raife Davies. My daughter's crush of the week can't steamroll me._

But it is those eyes – like glass, hard and fathomless – and they keep catching Raife off-guard and making him nervous. He can't look away and he cannot stand to focus on them.

He clears his throat and forces his gaze to the paperwork on his desk.

"Ashley tried to kill herself."

And the pen doesn't drop from his hand, but it stops moving.

And the clock keeps on ticking on the wall, but it is seems like seconds last eons.

And when he finally looks up, tears that just won't fall lingering along his eyes, Spencer Carlin isn't there.

///

"Hello…?"

"Well, hello to you, too… you little tramp—"

"Raphael, give me the phone."

"Oh **fine**."

"Spencer?"

Gabe's voice is a mixture of relief and worry and Spencer paces in the bathroom – sending her own edgy glances to her reflection.

"Yea, it's me."

"We can take you back up, okay?"

"Wait… what?"

"That's why you are calling, right?"

"Umm, well this number was in the handbook and I need advice… or something…"

"Look, it appears that your judgment is getting rather clouded – which can happen, I am not blaming you… but I think it would be for the best if you came back and let someone else do this one."

"…But what about Ashley?"

"Raphael can take care of her."

"How is that exactly **better** than me? He'll just force her to go to a drag show or to listen to Cher all day."

"Hey! You **impudent**—"

"Stop this **right** now, both of you!"

Gabe never speaks in that tone and it hushes them both up quite well.

"Spencer, it can be hard to distinguish yourself from the living this early in your angel-hood. The lines get blurred and you forget why you are there."

"But I haven't, okay? It's just… a minor detour…"

"Spencer…"

"Really. I can save her. I think I am making progress and she is beginning to trust me—"

"Spencer."

"…What?"

"Why did you call? Be honest."

And Spencer wants to say… well, everything going through her head, the jumbled mess of longing and sadness and fear and dedication – all of it hinged on this one woman that she didn't even know when she was alive and would have never met had she kept on living.

New York didn't have an Ashley Davies. New York didn't give her this Christmas spent in an office with a beautiful woman. New York didn't ever offer anything as wonderful and heart-breaking as this situation and the woman attached to it.

"I just… I want this to all work out… for everyone."

"You should come back and you know it."

"No. I **don't** know that at all."

"Yes you **do**."

_But… I can't… Gabe, don't you __**see**__? I am already falling so fast and so hard and I can't stop it. And I don't want to._

"Even if you stay and even if you save her, you will still have to leave, Spencer. You are dead."

"I… I know, I do know that…"

"I can't make you return."

"What about… you know… **him**?"

"He doesn't deal with such trivial matters. There are miracles to perform all across the world at this time of year and His hands are full. This, ultimately, is up to you."

_Well, then, if it's up to me…_

And she knows it is wrong, if not her feelings then acting on them in such a way – how will she ever explain what she is when it is time to take flight and leave Ashley behind? What will it do to the woman? _What will it do to __**me**__?_

There is heartache to be had and Spencer knows she just bought this one-way ticket to that feeling… but the journey is all she can see, down this hallway and back to that office and a sleeping Ashley Davies.

And so Spencer lies back down and wraps her arms about the woman, pleased when lips sleepily brush against her jaw and Ashley returns this embrace and the whole room is aglow.

The Christmas music still plays softly in the distance and Spencer holds on tighter, pressing a kiss to Ashley's forehead.

_We'll have to make forever out of days, Ashley. And I am going to save you in the process… I can promise you that…_

///

_Did you live up to your potential?_

_In that other life, no, I don't think so… but now… Now I am the best version of myself. I like who I see looking back at me. Don't you, too?_

///

TBC


	7. where you are

"What are we seeing again?"

"'It's A Wonderful Life'. I can't believe you've never seen this."

"It's an old film, right?"

"It's a **classic**."

"But it is in black-n-white… right?"

"Yessss…"

"Then that is why. I've never been a fan of movies like that."

"Well, this will change your mind. Besides, it is a Christmas tradition."

"For you, maybe…"

"We used gather around and watch it every Christmas Eve. Well, before I left and my brothers took off for college…"

"…Sounds nice."

Spencer turns and catches the sad smile on Ashley's face. And she cannot stand to see it, so she leans over and wipes it away with a buttery kiss.

She can feel the woman's lips curl upward and then the vibration of a light chuckle.

Spencer pulls back, raising one eyebrow in mock irritation.

"What's so funny?"

"You taste like popcorn."

"That's because I've just eaten some."

"More like the whole bucket."

"Hey!"

"The movie has not even started yet and I'm going to have to go back out to the concession stand."

"I don't see that box of Whoppers anywhere, Ms. Davies…"

"What are you implying, Ms. Carlin?"

"I think you know perfectly well what I am impl—"

Now it is a kiss that tastes faintly of chocolate and Spencer likes the combination of cheap candy and Ashley's mouth – _which is anything but cheap. I'd say Ashley's mouth is priceless._

When Ashley pulls back, self-satisfied smirk in place, Spencer just rolls her eyes.

And then the lights go down in this refurbished theater, where they are the only customers – feet propped up on the seats in front of them – and the screen crackles to life… Jimmy Stewart, struggling to find meaning in a life that seems destined for anything but greatness… and then realizing that meaning is everywhere in his life after-all. His life **is** the meaning of it all.

And yes, Spencer Carlin loves this film – bittersweet memories of her family flashing before her eyes. But it is not for her, not this time.

It is for Ashley Davies.

Ashley, who has spent too many holidays in an office, alone.

Ashley, who feels like the world expects more than she can ever give, always.

Ashley, who almost ended her life… without a care as to who might miss her…

Spencer hasn't forgotten why she is here, back on Earth and back in her body.

She has taken a few liberties with the job description – _'coz falling in love wasn't part of the ultimate plan…_

_But how could anyone __**not**__ love this woman?_

Past the hardness and the coldness, Ashley is so very fragile and so very wounded – like the most beautiful bird you've ever seen… but they are caged, bound and broken.

And Spencer's only goal is to set this woman free.

_For good._

*** *** ***

They are walking along the beach, shoes off, and Ashley makes a point of their hands brushing close to one another – swish, swish, swish – like a reminder that this is real at all.

Spencer likes it.

"I really don't do things like this, you know…"

"Walk on the beach?"

"Uh, no… uh, I don't open up to people very well."

"Well, I am pretty amazing and all. You probably can't help yourself."

"Yea, **that's **it."

And Ashley laughs, face breaking out with mirth and Spencer is blinded by it – like looking into the sun.

_I'm sorry Gabe, I really am. Tell God I am sorry, too. But I can't help it… just look at her! She is freakin' gorgeous!_

They are silent again, the rush of the ocean beside them a nice and calm kind of lullaby. But Ashley's voice rings out once more, this time subdued and almost child-like.

"…Why did you save me? I mean, really… why?"

Spencer reaches out and gently grabs Ashley's wrist, ignoring for just a moment the tears threatening to spill from the woman's brown eyes, pulling them effectively to a halt on this mostly empty stretch of shoreline.

"Because the world would be wrong without you in it, Ashley."

And then Spencer cannot ignore the tears, because they are falling.

As is the woman herself, tumbling to the wet sand and Spencer does her best to catch Ashley as she crashes down… does her best to hold Ashley as she cries and cries… does her best fix what has been forever cracked and left hollow…

When Ashley is calm again, just a hiccup or two of sorrow, they are sitting close and Spencer's arm is across Ashley's shoulders.

And those brown eyes, watery and wide, stare at Spencer's profile – as if seeing the first person on a planet full of trees and wild things… looking at Spencer with the kind of gaze that speaks of a total lack of understanding and, yet, with more hope than anyone else could ever muster…

Spencer likes it. She really does.

"I don't do this…" Ashley whispers, eyes unnervingly focused on Spencer – running a loop over her cheek and neck and then back up again.

"…Do what?" Spencer asks, because it feels like the time for jokes has long passed now.

"It's… it's like I want to just… I… Spencer, I…"

Ashley is stumbling under the weight of it all and Spencer reaches out again, not with her arms this time – but with all she has, all she is… angel and woman, friend you never knew you'd meet and lover you've always wanted… a girl from Ohio, a girl from New York, a girl from Heaven… Spencer turns her eyes toward Ashley and gives over everything she can.

Because she must. Because she has to. Because she wants to and nothing can stop her from doing so – even the facts, as cold and final as they are.

"…You make me feel things, things I've spent so much time killing off and… and shoving away… Spencer…"

Ashley's fingers are hot and cold at the same time, real and alive and Spencer slides against them – rough and soft upon her face.

And Ashley pushes off the skin and into the hair, gathering locks of blonde like they are strands of gold, running through it like feet through a field.

"Spencer… I think I am really starting to like you…"

It is whispered and it is not what all those thousands of romance novels would preach as the ultimate declaration of love – but from Ashley Davies, who really has no reason to trust some woman who fetches her files and fills up her coffee mug… who buts in on her suicide attempts and plays witness to each shattered moment… who forces Christmas cheer when it is probably not the woman's favorite day…

It is everything and more.

It is spoken with such sincerity and honestly, tripping from Ashley's mouth like the biggest confession – beyond sins and sanctimonious babble.

And Spencer doesn't just like it. She loves it.

"Good, because I think I am really starting to like you, too."

And on Christmas Day, on a beach in California, they sit and stay silent… Ashley's hand trailing down and taking hold of Spencer's hand, all at once shy and brave.

And Spencer loves it.

///

_Did you help others?_

_Yes. Yes, I did… I am… and it is helping me along the way. _

///

TBC


	8. where you want to be

Spencer can remember the absolute glee that overtook her little six-year old body when she got that pink-n-white bike, the kind with tassels on the handles and a banana-shaped seat and gleaming chrome spokes that shone in the Ohio summer sun.

And until now… that was probably her favorite memory, the jumping up and down about that gift – _put together by my father and a rich red bow tied to the bars by my mother _– her parents grinning at her and hugging her and taking pictures of Spencer Carlin's first two-wheel bicycle ride.

Sure, she crashed once and busted her knee and she cried – but she got back on and wobbled around and finally was able to make to the end of the street and back again.

And up to this moment in time, that recollection was **it** – the cherished moment that Spencer would go back to when a day really sucked or a person was too harsh or even when that same mother… _the one who cheered me on as I rode along the driveway_… would speak with disdain over the phone-line to a daughter who just wouldn't change… just **couldn't** change who she was…

_Who I am still, despite this situation I find myself in. And wouldn't she be surprised to find out that God could care less about who loves who down on Earth? Oh Mom, there is crow to eat and let me serve you the first bite…_

But those slightly bitter thoughts cannot stay put in Spencer, left to die along with her body all those years ago. They are just thoughts now. They are just passing emotions.

Because this new moment is overshadowing the day she got that perfect bike.

And Spencer Carlin doesn't mind one bit.

Because that bicycle is from another life, one that isn't hers anymore, just a past and a place that used to be… a family she can no longer have and can only remember from afar…

And this new moment, this brand-spanking-new moment, is making her heart (_which can't be real, can it?_) beat hard and steady. It is making her body thrum and her pulse race.

It is everything that everyone ever says it is and Spencer feels like she is living in a prolonged daydream – one that she knows she will have to wake up from soon… _too soon_…

But this moment, it is the one she will carry with her now – for when Heaven gets dull and when Raphael gets too bossy and for when the flowers just don't smell as sweet in that godly garden up on high… Spencer Carlin will recall this Christmas day with Ashley Davies.

And it will make her smile and jump for joy again.

///

They left the beach and Ashley didn't let go of Spencer's hand.

Not that Spencer was complaining. Quite the opposite, really – she held on firmly as they walked along the strip and took in the sights of fake snow against palm trees covered in green and white lights… Santa Claus playing a saxophone and hookers offering holiday deals and tourists flashing pictures…

It isn't Ohio at all. It isn't even New York. But California has its own kind of winter charm, sun-soaked and slightly tawdry… but it is there in the smiles of children and all those children at heart.

It is there in Ashley Davies, too.

It is there in the woman's slight smile when eager kids rush toward a random Santa and bombard the poor soul about goodies delivered.

It is there when the woman rolls her eyes, but keeps on grinning, when Spencer pulls her to a Christmas village display at a shop window – little houses lit up and little figurines spinning repeatedly on ceramic ice.

It is there when, underneath plastic mistletoe, Ashley blushes – but still leans forward and places such a brief kiss to the tip of Spencer's nose… before turning quickly away and pulling Spencer along, mumbling something about 'getting out of this crowd already…'.

_California has holiday spirit, alright… right there in Ashley's eyes, a star yet to be dimmed… and that's who I am saving today… that's who I am falling for…_

They leave the hustle and bustle of the streets as evening draws near, Spencer allowing Ashley to lead her along to whatever destination seems fit, trusting the woman implicitly… _something it seems very few people do and always to the detriment of Ashley_… and they end up at a wrought-iron fence that seems to go on forever.

When Ashley lets go of her hand and begins to climb upon said fence, that's when Spencer wonders if some of that trust was a **tad** misplaced.

"C'mon, Carlin… before the sun goes all the way down and we get totally lost…"

"Get lost **how** exactly? Where are we?"

"It's a park, part of some land trust and it is private property. But it has a great open spot that is perfect for looking at the sky."

"So… this is illegal?"

"Kind of."

"'Kind of'? I think you mean 'yes'."

"Don't worry…"

And Spencer looks up at a grinning Ashley, with her hand outstretched and beckoning.

"…I'm a lawyer. I can get us out of jail if need be."

///

"I used to come here a lot when I was younger."

"Spent a lot of time breaking the law, hmm?"

"…Maybe."

"Ooh, the sordid past of Ashley Davies, do tell…"

"And I guess you were a goody-two-shoes, Spencer Carlin?"

"Mostly. But I did my fair share of sneaking around, too. It was a small town in Ohio, you had to get your kicks somehow."

"What, like cow-tipping?"

"Don't knock it 'til you try it."

"…Are you being serious?"

"Maybe, maybe not."

Ashley's laughter coasts out into the increasing dark as they lay side by side on the grass and look upon the canvas of universe above – probably the only place this close to the city where you can still see stars past the smog and the constant glare of artificial illumination.

"My, uh, father… he used to bring me here when I was a kid, you know, trying to impress upon me the importance of nature."

"He had you hopping fences at night?"

"No, during the day."

Ashley shoves Spencer's shoulder lightly, a playful move and when Spencer slowly shifts back… she shifts closer, their shoulders now snug against each other.

"Well, that must have been nice… right?"

"Yea, yea it was."

"Do you… miss being close to him?"

"…Sometimes."

It is soft response and Spencer keeps her eyes trained above, giving Ashley the room to speak if she wants. Or to not speak at all… giving Ashley the room to just **be**.

"I miss the simplicity of being young… and on the night… the night you found me on the roof, that's all I was thinking about, you know… Just up there, thinking about how life used to be okay and somehow it had all turned to shit. And I didn't want to **deal** with it anymore. I didn't want to look into his eyes and see disappointment anymore. I didn't want to look at my mother and know that she doesn't care. I didn't want to see the faces of those I failed and of those I hurt and those I used… I just… I just didn't want to **exist** anymore. And jumping… well, it seemed like the simple solution… to everything."

Spencer squints at the sky now, distant planets and galaxies growing blurry, and she wonders if she is the first angel to ever cry tears over a human.

But that is silly, because she is sure she is not the first at all.

And she won't be the last, not by a long-shot.

But she stays silent still, pressing that shoulder of hers against Ashley's and slowly moving her hand… fingers overlapping as lightly as a breeze over the surface of skin…

"And then, there you were, Spencer Carlin… confusing the hell out of me and jerking me back to the land of the living… like you knew something I didn't…"

And Spencer can't take it, so she moves swiftly and rises up, startling Ashley in the process.

She leans over the woman and descends again, blocking out the myriad of celestial bodies in the atmosphere from view… and she presses her lips to Ashley's.

And she can taste her own tears – as if she were the one who is human after all.

Ashley's hands wind a path into Spencer's hair, caressing one way and holding fast in the other direction – keeping Spencer close and letting Spencer know it is welcomed, all at the same time.

When she pulls back, only by centimeters, the air from Ashley's mouth cascades along Spencer's face and the woman's eyes are shut tight… and Ashley's body is trembling.

"You're shaking…"

"I am terrified of you."

"…Really? Please don't be…"

"It's… not a bad thing… It's just new. All of this is. I don't—"

"Do this sort of thing?"

"Right."

"I, uh, heard you those first couple of times."

"It's overwhelming, how you make me feel. It's like… a spell or something."

"I can pull rabbits out of hats, too."

And then those brown eyes flutter open, leaving Spencer absolutely speechless, lips poised and hair like a golden curtain around the two of them.

"I wasn't joking about this being the best Christmas. I mean it. I won't ever forget this."

"Me neither."

Spencer places a less heated kiss to Ashley's cheek and then drifts back down, staying as close as she can and rests her head on Ashley's chest.

And they watch the stars on Christmas, in an empty park and on the grass, one of them falling asleep and the other one keeping watch… being a guardian.

_I'm your guardian angel, Ashley. And I won't let anything happen to you, not on this night… not ever._

///

_Are you, or have you ever been, content with the life you've had thus far?_

_This moment is all the contentment I'll ever need._

///

TBC


	9. when you fail

But then, of course, it had to end.

Isn't that a tired and true phrase that some poor soul conjured up, maybe while watching Rome burn to the ground or while waiting for the bomb to drop on some foreign shore?

Don't we all say such things when the very structure we cling to starts to crack and fall apart? Like we always expected it to… but we really didn't. We are just trying, hopelessly, to soften the blow of being oh so wrong.

Spencer carries this moment in her pocket, as the clouds cover the land and rain starts to fall and it must be cold because Ashley is **almost** squealing – **almost** sounding like a little kid.

And maybe this happened to Ashley before, running wild in a park in the middle of the night and dodging drops of water from the sky… maybe when she was just that tiny girl, with a father who saw her and made her smile… maybe this is all just a recollection for Ashley and Spencer is some bizarre new element within the memory…

A freakish point of light in a never-ending night of what used to be, that's what Spencer is right now.

And she cannot stand the thought of fading from Ashley's view, with the woman's wet hand in her own and the wind picking up and that cold rain binding them together as they rush to somewhere safe.

But yes, all good things… all good things come to an end.

Someone came up with that phrase, maybe someone a lot like Spencer… someone a lot like a dead woman, watching love blossom for the first time – but knowing it is the last time as well.

And Spencer carries this moment in the very fibers of her being, a mess of make-believe bones and an owned soul… Spencer carries this moment and cherishes it like it deserves to be cherished.

They are over the fence again and running still, hand in hand, and Ashley is laughing.

She is laughing and brown eyes are dancing in the streetlights and Christmas is almost over.

And they are soaked through and Ashley is pulling her along, pushing her under an awning… and Spencer is watching every single move that Ashley makes.

The careless way Ashley pushes her hair behind her ears and the roll of her eyes at how pointless it is to try and fix wet locks of chestnut. And the way Ashley's hand grips once, twice and then gently slips away… the way water travels slowly down Ashley's neck…

And just like that, they are kissing.

Just like that, Ashley's wet and warm and smooth body is against Spencer – and they are kissing.

Those fingers are upon Spencer's face, holding on for dear life, and a lively tongue is sliding against Spencer's bottom lip – and they are kissing.

All the old memories get replaced again with a kiss like this one.

And Ashley is fleeing tall buildings, families that don't give a damn, a life not fully lived.

And Spencer is hiding from the inevitable.

_And __**yes**__, fuck it all, all good things must come to an end_… but they are both fighting it, tooth and nail, they are fighting it…

///

Spencer is with Chelsea for the first couple of days of January, only catching a fleeting glimpse of Ashley as the hours and hours go by.

Not that she expects the world to, you know, stop for the two of them.

_I don't feel that way. Not at all._

But that is kind of a lie and she stares idly at the wall as documents get copied and all the people at this law-firm move around her – a river of faces she could care less about.

Which makes her feel bad, _in a way_, because she should be more benevolent and kind and interested – she is an angel, after-all.

But her blue eyes betray her constantly, with every door that opens and every click of heels on stone floors – she looks for Ashley Davies and is always disappointed.

Chelsea peppers her with non-invasive questions about the time off for the holidays.

And Spencer weaves a convincingly dull tale (_it involves friends and alcohol and a hangover, concluding with calls from my family…_).

And she files and she fetches and she makes calls and she takes notes, but it is all automatic and she is feeling so human – _**again**_ – and frustration wells up in her throat.

And she doesn't like feeling like this when she shouldn't be **feeling** anything at all.

However, as if she were still a teenager and not a grown woman… _a grown and presently-deceased woman, but that's just comparing apples and oranges, right? _

…As if her emotions were strings attached to Ashley Davies lovely hands, the woman is walking toward Spencer and all that angst drifts away and she is grinning – _just a bit_ – before they even say one word to each other.

"Uh, do you have plans for lunch?"

Ashley isn't fully looking at her, but she is close and smells vaguely like cinnamon and the inquiry is soft, brushing against Spencer's cheek.

"Yes."

Ashley is staring hard at the copying machine, fingers rapping and she swallows and those eyes finally make contact, trying so hard to look nonchalant.

"…Oh. Um, what are your plans?"

"I've got a date with a fine looking sandwich."

Ashley tilts her head then and the gaze settles right on Spencer and those fingers still and a deliciously slow grin starts to grow upon Ashley's mouth.

"Mind if I join you?"

"What kind of girl do you think I am, Ashley Davies? How would my poor sandwich feel if I showed up with you?"

Ashley's grin is infectious and they are both smiling and staring and Spencer wonders if they can take lunch somewhere private… _I really hope the other angels are busy right now and not listening in on these thoughts. Maybe they had to get a cat out of a tree or go bless a convent or something…_

"C'mon, Spencer… I **promise** to behave."

Ashley's voice is low and those eyes are dark and suddenly all this air conditioning in this building seems positively worthless.

_Damn thing must not be working well. Someone should turn it on, full blast. There's a fridge in the break-room, I could go there and stick my head in the freezer for a while. Yea, that would work __**really**__ well._

"Don't make promises you can't keep."

But Spencer doesn't go to the break-room and her voice is a delicate rumble in an otherwise noisy space and for Ashley's ears only and Ashley's gaze flutters to Spencer's mouth.

And Spencer's head is flooded with some very indecent imagery, not befitting of an angelic savior at all, and most of it consists of slamming Ashley up against the wall and undoing those shirt buttons… and it must read pretty plain on her face because Ashley actually gasps – a short shock of air from those amazing lips – and the woman starts to unconsciously lean in…

"It's jammed, Spence."

And Chelsea's voice is that proverbial bucket of cold water.

Ashley blinks rapidly and steps back, smoothing down non-existent wrinkles on her skirt and face turning a revealing shade of pink and clips her side on the copying machine as she moves away – which causes her to look down at the malfunctioning piece of equipment like it is the most offending thing in the universe.

Spencer catches her breath and turns to Chelsea, weak smile in place.

"Yea, jammed. Right. Might need, uh, you know… what's-his-name to check it out."

"Josh?"

"Right. Josh."

"You okay?"

"Yea, sure, of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

"You seem a little off, that's all…"

"Oh, well, it's lunch and I am hungry. For lunch."

Chelsea raises an eyebrow, looking bemused – _and a tad disbelieving_ – but the woman allows it to slide on by. She waves over Spencer's shoulder and smiles.

"Hope your day isn't as swamped as mine, Ashley."

"Uh, n-no, not really."

Spencer can't help it, she really can't – that tiny stutter just keeps the fire burning in her gut, that swirling mass of arousal that Ashley Davies seems to inspire… _and for the love of, well, you know who… __**please**__ leave Chelsea…_

"Lucky you. I got stuck almost **all** morning down at city hall, talking zoning laws with Harris. God, he is a real piece of work…"

"Yea, um, he really is… sorry, I've got to go. Uh, I forgot about… something I gotta do. Sorry."

And they watch Ashley walk fast down the hall and around the corner.

"Hmm, Ashley seems a little off, too."

"Really? Oh, I hadn't noticed that."

Chelsea's look is one of warning and maybe a little bit of humor and Spencer doesn't feel like dealing with a look like that… _**especially**__ while I am incredibly turned-on and I don't need a lecture on 'mixing business with pleasure', because I am well aware of how __**wrong**__ it is… on more levels than anyone can guess…_

And once again, Chelsea Lewis allows the moment to pass silently, mentioning Josh and the jammed copying machine one more time before walking away.

_Oh, I am so __**fucked**__, aren't I?, _Spencer thinks as she tips her head back and looks upward, knowing just who is watching her spin totally out of control during this 'assignment from above'.

But that thought doesn't stop her from tracking Ashley Davies down as soon as Chelsea is gone, her lunch forgotten (_not that I need it anyway_) and quietly shutting the door to Ashley's office as the woman watches nervously from the center of the room.

"She can't know. I can't let my father find out."

"Find out about what?"

And Spencer walks slowly toward the woman, taking in those wide eyes and the way those hands flutter about – on edge and burning up…

"About you and I, Spencer."

"Is there a… 'you and I'?"

And Spencer almost laughs at Ashley's face, the furrowing of that gorgeous brow and the slight frown of those wonderful lips…

"Well, I mean… I thought… we were, I mean…"

"Miss Davies, I am sure I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about."

But they are face to face and Spencer reaches up, brushing her knuckles along Ashley's cheek and Spencer gets closer still – fluttering eyelids and nuzzling her nose against Ashley's softer-than-soft flesh and pleasantly surprised at the resulting groan from the woman…

"I won't let anything bad happen to you, Ashley. I promise." Spencer whispers, bringing her arms up and around the woman, keeping them together for as long as she can… before the lunch hour is up and work continues and the world intrudes and truth bleed out into everything…

"Don't make promises you can't keep." Ashley whispers back as the embrace is returned, taking a line already spoken and tossing it out with that trademark insecurity… the yolk around Ashley's beautiful neck, the reason Spencer Carlin is here at all.

"I am going to keep this one. I swear it. I _swear_ it…"

_I swear it. I do. I swear it on my soul. I won't let you down, Ashley._

///

But then, of course, it had to end.

All good things do.

Spencer's phone rang that morning and no one ever calls her, so she knew who was on the other end of that line. And she didn't answer, didn't pick up, didn't check her messages.

_I made a promise. You can't make me break it._

And she didn't think about the bigger picture, that garden and that boardroom in the clouds and God.

Because what is that to her? How can **that** compare to Ashley Davies?

Spencer wanted to fight the coming of the dawn. She wanted to rail against this twist of fate that would give her love **now** and not when she was truly alive.

She wanted to have steady footing and not die in New York… and then, somehow, find her way to California and this stupid temp job and fall in love with Ashley.

She didn't want Gabe's voice, all knowing and condescending, ringing in her head.

Or Michael's disapproval. Or Raphael's snark.

She doesn't want to reside in heavenly bliss, while – on Earth – there is the only bliss that Spencer wants and craves and needs…

_I made a promise. I'm going to keep it. I'm going to save her and… and there has to be a way I can stay here, be here… with her…_

All good things, though, must come to an end.

They always do.

Like Newton and the apple and the realization that what goes up must come down… Spencer Carlin is just a piece of fruit crashing through the atmosphere.

And she knows just where she is going to land – walking into a silent law firm, even before the birds are up, to meet with Ashley… but finding that they are not to be alone for this 'secret' rendezvous… her feet skidding to a halt when she hears Raife Davies and Ashley verbally arguing… when she hears her own angry confession (_'You tried to commit suicide, Ashley, that means you need help…'_) drift out of his mouth and smack right into Ashley's unprotected face…

Spencer Carlin knows just where she is going to land.

And it breaks her heart into a million pieces.

///

TBC


	10. when you fall apart

"**Rule Nine of Engagement – Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst"**

That's the one that stood out the most when Spencer read the guide, her second or third night back on Earth and bored with television.

All the others seemed… well, doable and like the kind of instructions you might get when putting a bookcase together yourself.

As long as you found the English language side and not the Chinese, eventually you'd have a pretty sweet shelving unit to hold all your cookbooks or novels or what-not.

But this one rule, it suggested that things would go wrong – as if you couldn't avoid it – and so don't get your hopes up too high.

Because the higher you rise, the harder you fall.

And Spencer doesn't have wings, not yet, so it would probably hurt to hit the ground that fast.

The green of grass and the gray of sidewalks and the surface of the world is quick to approach, though, and Spencer isn't prepared for the impact.

As if sensing her there, the door is flung open and Ashley's face is a mirror of wounded shock – like a soldier shot in the chest by a friend, a traitor, a turncoat – and then it is morphing into fury.

"You told him. You **fucking** told him, didn't you?"

And Spencer tries to recall the day on the beach, with Ashley in wonder and in awe by her side.

And she tries to remember Ashley watching that old film, with chocolate lips and warm eyes.

And she thinks about running, hand-in-hand, in the rain and kisses and the build-up of some kind of special love… the kind that people dream of and Heaven banks on and Satan fears… the kind of love that can withstand peril and mistakes…

And Spencer watches it all slowly and sadly slip away again.

"Yes, I did."

"Get the **hell** out of here. **Now**."

"Ashley…"

Raife Davies voice is so unexpected that Spencer just blinks, as if in a daze, and she watches as Ashley keeps her gaze focused ahead – staring hard at Spencer as if just a look could turn back time and keep the woman safe from those who might betray her… keep her safe from angels with too much time on their non-human hands…

"Neither of you have the right to interfere in **my** life. You…" And Ashley is pointing a trembling finger at her father.

"…lost the right to interfere in my life the day you decided to fuck our family over, decided to fuck **me** over for some piece of ass."

"Ashley, you are walking on some thin ice here—"

"Fine then, I'll go. Get yourself another partner."

"Ashley, **please**—"

But the woman is gathering up her rage, shaping it and forming it like Mother Nature does the wind, and she is blowing doors off of buildings now.

She is a tidal wave and she is a typhoon. She is out of control and Spencer would give anything to calm this storm… but Spencer caused it and Spencer must weather it right to the end.

"And you… **damn you**, just… damn you, Spencer Carlin… get the **fuck** out of here and **out** of my life…"

But the woman is breaking into a billion shards, too.

She is falling apart at the seams and the needle stands silent in Spencer's hands.

"I told him because he **needed** to know, Ashley. He needed to realize that he was going to **lose** you forever."

"I told you not to tell **anyone**!"

The yell is deafening and it ricochets along the walls and it further pierces Spencer's soul – it rips another piece of her all-too-human feeling heart down and stomps on it.

"…I couldn't let you drown yourself, Ashley. I couldn't let you flounder. I had to… I had to save you somehow… someway…"

"Who put you in charge of that? Who the **hell** put you in charge of my life or my death or anything else? It wasn't me. You just stepped the fuck in and… I trusted you… damn it all, I **trusted **you…"

"You still can, Ashley, please… you still can—"

"No. Get out. Don't come back. Don't you **dare** come back here. This is over, you got it? This…"

And Ashley's hand is trapped between the two of them, unmoving and accusatory and broken.

And those brown eyes finally crack and shed beautifully tragic tears, a steady stream of sorrow over those lovely cheeks and hanging precariously off that soft chin.

"…**This** is over. Just leave. Just… leave."

And just as quickly as it was opened, the door is shut again.

There is muted talking on the other side, but that is only the way Spencer is hearing it – the talking is really fighting and the fighting is loud… not at all subdued…

But she cannot comprehend the sounds, not really.

And she blindly walks out of the law-firm, unnoticed by the few people wandering into another work day.

She walks and walks and finds her feet have taken her back home.

But, of course, it is not really her home.

That nice bed is not really hers, nor are the clothes on her back.

L.A. isn't her city and she can't ever go back to New York… and she certainly can't run and hide in Ohio anymore – can't find solace in her mother's embrace or in her father's voice anymore.

There is just a book of rules for angels and a phone number to call in times of trouble.

And the damn phone is ringing as she walks in the door, but – unlike this morning – she picks up and readies herself for giving up.

Because she has failed in a most spectacular way… and God might not want her in his endless garden.

/// /// ///

"Do you want to come back?"

"I think it might be for the best."

"Okay. We can do that."

"…Great."

"Don't worry, Spencer. We all make first-time blunders. You'll have a chance to do it again and it'll be easier."

"Can't I just… isn't there a desk job I can have or something?"

Gabe's laugh is delicate and kind and Spencer grins to herself – but it is a desperate kind of tiny smile – one she has to force so that she doesn't sob herself to distraction.

"I'll see what I can do. But, just turn the lights out and wait outside your apartment building. I'll send someone to pick you up."

"Pick me up? Like a… heavenly taxi service?"

"…Not exactly."

They hang up at the same time and she takes one last look around her make-believe life and she clutches the angel manual to her chest and she begs her mind to forget Ashley Davies as best she can – but she fears it'll never work out that way.

_There has to be punishment of some kind for fucking up so royally, so being plagued by the memory of the one woman I've ever loved sounds about right…_

And she stands outside, where it is a little warm and the breeze is a little humid and the sun is high in the sky – signaling noon – and she knows this is the last time she'll ever see a California day.

And it hurts like hell.

"Well, you certainly outdid yourself, didn't you?"

Spencer turns slowly and her shoulders just have to sag.

"Did you volunteer for this little jaunt **just** to piss me off?"

"As if I'd suggest myself for this. Just my turn… **much** to my chagrin."

"You know what? It's been a **really** bad day, so can we just skip the banter and get going?"

But Raphael's smile is everything but angelic and he takes her reluctant arm in his own and pulls her along in a casual stroll.

"Hey, it's been a while since I've been down here… maybe I want to see the sights, catch a film or two… hit up Pink's Hot Dog for a foot-long…"

"As great as all that sounds, I want to **leave**. I'm done down here, okay? Ready to hand this over to someone more… seasoned or whatever… and put it behind me."

"Well, we don't always get what we want, do we?"

"…Apparently not."

And Spencer glares at the angel, but even she knows it is a weakened version of her usual bite.

All of this interaction is weak and pathetic and she isn't sure how to get back any sort of… of…

"Oh, lay **off it** already, blondie. So, you screwed up and now you are all… angsty. Before you know it, a million years will have gone by and you'll forget this blip on the screen."

"Can you… read my mind or something?"

"Nope, just very perceptive. It's a talent."

"Oh yea, what am I thinking right now?"

_Middle finger, __**right**__ at you, you annoying jack-ass…_

"I don't have to be a mind-reader to know **that** look."

"Because you get that look so often I'd imagine."

"There she is, feisty little Spencer Carlin… thorn in my proverbial side…"

"Glad to be of service."

"So… hot dogs first and then a movie? Or vice versa?"

Spencer pulls back from Raphael and she can feel the confusion lurking all over her features.

"Seriously, what are you doing? Aren't you supposed to, I don't know, beam me up or something?"

"This isn't Star Trek."

"You **know **what I **mean**… why are we hanging around?"

"A transfer of duties is not a simple matter, Spencer. It takes some time, which is why **I** now have time to kill… with you, Heaven help me."

"This is ridiculous."

"So are tube socks, but you don't hear me complaining."

"**You** are ridiculous."

"So, let's see a movie first… it's on me."

What Raphael's 'it's on me' really meant was just walking in the theater without buying a ticket, which prompted Spencer to ask another round of questions.

"What do you mean we can't be seen?"

"Your time here is done, so no one needs to be able to see you… thus you are invisible. As am I. Consider it your Christmas Carol moment."

"So… we could do anything and no one would know…?"

"Pretty much, but that is not encouraged, of course."

"You just got us into a movie without paying. That's **wrong**."

"And it is about to start, so shut up."

"**You** shut up."

"Spencer, don't be a brat."

"I'm not a—"

"**Shhh**!"

_Wait, I was wrong again, wasn't I? __**This**__ is the real punishment, isn't it? Spending a day with Raphael… wow, God, you really know how to torture a girl…_

/// /// ///

It is a meaningless movie, filled with stupid laughs and false love… and Spencer hides the fact that she is crying as best she can in a candy-bar she can barely taste.

She felt kind of bad for taking it, because it is like stealing – but she figured that God owed her one for being put through this agony Raphael's company on the worst day of her life.

_Or non-life as it were._

In her other life, the one where she actually was alive, she guess the worst day should be the one where she stepped off that subway and couldn't stay upright.

It should be the moment her motor functions ceased and her blood ran cold in her veins.

That should be the worst day ever – the one that took her life and took her from her family and her friends and from the world as she knew it.

She'd never get to wake up to a snowy New York morning again, frost on the windows and the leaky faucet in her kitchen or the way Mrs. Sanderson's cat would always run in Spencer's door and hop onto her space heater like it wasn't a dangerous thing.

She'd never get to run to catch a cab in traffic, waving her hands and laughing and flinging her purse into the dirty leather seat – late to work and still no one could ever fire her, they like her too much and she knows it.

She'd never know if, in that other life, there would have been someone to share her embrace with… if there was some woman unknown in the Big Apple, just waiting for the second they would meet and lock eyes and fall in love.

That should be the worst day ever, the day that Spencer Carlin ceased to be.

But it isn't, not in the slightest.

Because today is the worst day.

Today, with no one able to see her save Raphael and a sappy film before her and a tasteless candy-bar in her mouth and a damp face full of sadness… today is the shittiest day Spencer has ever had the misfortune of going through.

And Ashley is all she can think about, all she can hear in her ears, all she can see in her watery gaze.

Ashley Davies…

…_with her untamed hair and delicate smile and her damn sexy legs and the sensation of her lips on mine and the joy I witnessed in her as we lay underneath the stars and the weight of her hanging onto my hand – from a rooftop and over a fence and rushing down the streets…_

…_Ashley Davies, the love of my life and my afterlife and forever…_

"I can't stay here…" Spencer whispers in between heaving sobs and she flees the theater, pushing out into the masses of people who can't even see her as she loses everything that ever mattered at all.

/// /// ///

"Did I ever tell you about the time I was sent to Tokyo?"

She had thought that, maybe, she had lost Raphael somehow.

But that was a silly thought.

Spencer can't lose herself and she can't shake the angels at her back – she can't disappear from what she is anymore.

Even though she wants to.

But here they sit, on the Santa Monica Pier, with the sun slowly dying in the sky and hoards of faces moving past them – brushing by them, passing through them…

Spencer doesn't answer, she just keeps staring ahead and watches the sky go from a pastel blue to something darker, the coming of dusk and the hinting at nighttime.

It is lovely and grand and she soaks it up like she is dying all over again – she is taking the chance to watch the world fade from view this time, unlike the first time… where it was all just ripped from her.

"It wasn't my first time back on Earth, but it might has well been. It was during World War Two and I was so full of myself… you know, I had done **such** a good job the first time around with my subject, got her to rethink abandoning her child and it all worked out great. So, I was eager. Stupidly eager… but eager nonetheless…"

Spencer watches a couple walk along the shore and the kiss and they laugh and she wants to hate them – but more than that, she knows she envies them and that burns hot in her body… it burns so hot that she is sure she'll spontaneously combust and be nothing more than phantom dust.

"And there he was, the guy I was supposed to keep from drinking himself to death and, subsequently, ruining his mother's life. And… he was just… so **gorgeous**. Really and truly, Spencer… just wonderful.

And talented! He could draw so well and paint… and I couldn't understand why he would want to pollute his body all the time and hurt his family. So, it became my mission to not only save him, but to **fix** him.

Because, surely if anyone needed to be whole and happy, it was him… and I was the one who was going to make it happen."

Spencer inhales and exhales and her chest is tight and she turns her gaze onto Raphael – fearful of his story and, yet, needing to hear it.

Just like this sunset and its overwhelming finality… she needs to hear this tale and how it spirals out, how it unfurls and where it flutters to.

"He couldn't join in the war due to a heart condition and his father was ashamed, so that is what started the drinking. And his family never supported his artistic inclinations, so he drank more. His body was dying on him and I found him one night, blood on his lips, and so I made myself known.

I would talk to him and he'd ask me where I came from, but… somewhere along the way… all his stories became my stories, too. And he got me to thinking about… about my home and those I had lost when I died… and there I was, Spencer, trying to save him and ended up thinking only about myself.

And, like the good man I knew he was, he comforted me. **Me**, an angel who was sent for **him**… and he was wiping **my** tears away…"

Spencer tastes Thai food on her tongue and recalls a tearful remembrance in a midnight office, a tender shoulder and a shy arm, Ashley Davies holding Spencer Carlin up when it should have been the other way around.

"And I fell in love with him **so** quickly. I loved his fingers and the way they would hold bits of charcoal to a blank canvas. I loved the sound of his laugh in the morning. I loved the scent of him when he would hug me, timid and still brave, wanting to give me everything he thought he could never give to anyone.

And all I wanted, in that moment, was to stay with him.

Just to be with him… and I would have been content for all of time…"

Spencer feels a hand upon her stomach and warm breath on her neck and the beating down of the sunlight through tall windows, Ashley Davies wrapped around Spencer Carlin on Christmas morning and she wanted for nothing more… she needed nothing but this woman against her…

"But… that is not how it goes and I didn't know if I had a heart anymore, but it broke. It broke and I cried and I had to walk away when all I wanted was to cling to him.

I couldn't save him, not in the end. The alcohol had taken its toll and his liver failed him and all those drawings got burned by his family. I failed so **badly** and in so many ways and I **vowed** to never get that close again. But it isn't easy… because it wasn't just him I fell in love with, it was being here again. It was feeling alive again that I loved, too. It was **feeling** anything at all that I loved. It was heady and blissful… and it outweighed God and Heaven. It still does. But it does get easier, Spencer… it really does… you'll see…"

And suddenly she is pitching sideways and holding on tightly to Raphael and she isn't sure if she ever stopped crying at all – not from the theater and not from that closed up park and not from that office and not from New York… Spencer Carlin isn't sure of another time where she has been this weary or so ruined.

"I love her **so** much…"

"I know you do… I know…"

"Y-You've got to promise me… that it g-gets better… **please**, promise m-me…"

And it is like she is a child, the most innocent child ever and all those fantasies are being trashed and fucked up… and she needs someone to say it'll all be okay, that she'll survive this blow and be able to smile again… one day… one day… one day…

"One day, Spencer, it will. I promise."

And Raphael's arms feel safe, so she stays there as the sun finally lowers and night falls over the sand and the ocean and over all things.

/// /// ///

TBC


	11. how you heal

_I was only nine or ten at the time and I watched the two of them fight._

_I could have pretended to hide, slip around the corner and stay in the shadows… but they were being loud and they were not trying to keep anything from my eyes – so I stood right there, in the foyer, frozen gaze on my parents._

_My father, normally a jovial man with dancing eyes and who loved to pick me up in his arms, hold me tight… loved to spin me around and call me his little 'supergirl'… loved to take me to the beach and build sand-castles for hours on end…_

_My father looked like a volcano I once saw in a science book at school._

_He was on fire and ready to explode._

_My mother, normally so quiet and always checking my room, to make sure it was tidy… pulling the wrinkles out of my skirts and blouses with long and delicate fingers… making sure I always got a chocolate cake for every birthday…_

_My mother looked like a glacier I once saw in some old film at my grandmother's house._

_She was cold and just like stone._

_And there, just past the edge of them… just past their yelling and their angry silence… I saw some other girl, standing and sobbing and small hand holding onto a suitcase._

_And that's how I met Kyla, my sister._

_I don't pay much mind to the 'half' title as much as my mother does._

_A sister is a sister is a sister._

_I was just glad to not go through this alone, because even though I was young, I knew that something important was going on and that nothing would ever be like it once was._

_What was right just slipped away, like a summer breeze out the window, and what was wrong took root… and we were never the same._

_**I **__was never the same._

_Oh sure, for a while we all did a bit of make-believing._

_Barbeques and parties and such, school and games and talent shows… and my parents were there, but they weren't __**really**__ there at all._

_I knew it, whether they meant for me to know or not._

_I knew it._

_And my father didn't spin me around as much._

_And my mother started to forget those birthdays._

"_I miss Baltimore." Kyla cried one night in my bedroom, because her room wasn't furnished yet – it was my mother's gym still._

"_It's fun here. We've got the beach and Disneyland. I was on a movie set once, so maybe I can take you to one… okay?"_

"_Really?"_

_A sniffle, an arm around my waist and Kyla fell asleep and I daydreamed about a life full of candy and laughter and a family that would be there always._

_I held onto that dream for as long as I could._

_Even when my father stopped coming home at night and didn't show up until the next day._

_Even when my mother stopped caring if any of us were coming home at all._

_I held on for as long as I could._

_Until all I was holding was air – thin and useless air, the kind you find at the top of mountains… the kind that fucking kills you, makes you bleed…_

_And all that make-believing became real somehow, a twisted reality that we all played a part in._

_My father, Raife Davies, lawyer and married man. My father, the adulterer._

_My mother, Christine Davies, wife and mother. My mother, the controlling bitch._

_And me, Ashley Davies, daughter and… and just fine, happy, well-adjusted, part of a good family, good student, straight as a line…_

_Ashley Davies, a girl in a million pieces, fragmented and fake._

_My father asked for a divorce from my mother when I was fourteen and it wasn't a case of fireworks at all. No one gave a damn._

_Which meant we all cared too much, but couldn't stand to show it anymore._

_We all lied a little bit more… I mean, why not?_

_Kyla went to the mall with her newest best friend._

_My mother asked for more money and the house and told my father that he'd better not try to screw her over. My father signed the papers and was already calling his mistress before his feet reached the door._

_And I looked away. I just looked away like none of it matter at all._

_I called this boy I was just starting to date and we had sex in his parent's bedroom._

_It was my first time and I just didn't care._

_And I lied a little more._

_Why not?_

_It's what we were all doing._

_It's __**all**__ we ever did._

_I let that dream go that day, watched it crash to the floor and shatter, and I realized that people don't really love – they just leave… even when they are in the same room as you, they are so far gone._

_I gave up those tiny wishes, the notebook I kept at the bottom of my desk… the one filled with pointless lyrics and worried concerns over sexuality, over my future, over my parents… and I packed it away._

_I stopped playing that second-hand guitar. Kyla and I stopped talking every morning before school._

_My mother gave me money instead of cakes for my birthdays and I spent it all on getting wasted with my friends, always in bars that shouldn't have let us in at all._

_I gave up._

_Or so I thought._

_Or so I wanted to think, was desperate to believe._

_Because to care means to hurt and to hurt means to feel and to feel means that something fucking matters at all… and we don't do that._

_**I**__ don't do that._

_Ashley Davies, partner at a law-firm and strong and attractive and capable and… and…_

…_broken, wires cut where they should connect, a misfiring piston in a busted engine._

_And I wasn't looking to be fixed. I wasn't looking to be healed._

_I gave that up, along with every other dream._

_I gave that up when I saw my mother burn all the pictures of us as a family, still wickedly bitter._

_I gave that up when my father hired me and didn't even talk to me for three weeks._

_I gave up and I gave in and… I didn't want to be saved._

_And that's why I want to hate you, Spencer Carlin._

_Because you brought something back to my mind, a Technicolor memory that I thought I had smothered and buried, a remembrance of something that was once so damn good…_

_And that's why I want to hate you, Spencer Carlin._

_Because you have reminded me of oceans and sticky sweet hands and how it feels to run with abandon, you have reminded me of the innocence of kisses and the joy of tears…_

_And that's why I want to hate you, Spencer Carlin._

_Because you didn't just let me see how beautiful you are, with your hair of gold and your eyes of blue… but because you allowed me to see how beautiful __**everything**__ could be, from late nights to breathtaking mornings… from old films and starry skies… from soft skin and smiling lips and…_

…_and that's why I want to hate you, Spencer Carlin._

_Because I wasn't looking to be rescued and, yet, you pulled me up when I was falling._

_And you've kept me walking when, normally, I'd be crawling._

_And you've forced me to laugh when, normally, I'd be screaming._

_And you've changed my whole fucking world as easily as a kid dismantles a stack of blocks… and I don't know how to build it back up again…_

_And I __**want **__to hate you, Spencer Carlin._

_But I __**can't**__ hate you… _

_You won't hear me saying why, though. _

_Not on this day, watching your face disappear as I shut the door and turn my back on you and tell myself that none of this matters – I can go back to how it used to be, sure I can, and you'll just be a mistake and you'll just be a misstep and you'll fade from my life like everything else…_

_And I lie a little more._

_Just a little more._

/// /// ///

Raife Davies catches the moment that Ashley's spine stiffens, rigidly trying to hold back the tide… to buffer the blows of the sea…

And not for the first time, he wishes that it was his love that could shield her. He wishes it was his love that could calm her.

But it is his love – and the absence of his love - that has brought Ashley to this moment.

And he knows it.

That is the bitter pill he has spent the past ten years or so attempting to swallow, each edge just a little sharper than before and cutting him to the quick and reminding him of his very first mistake – _walking out that door, with barely a glance back at the children I was leaving behind… all too eager to cut Christine out of my life, to kiss my new lover on her adoring lips without feeling like a cheater, to paint over the painful end of something that was once everything… and I ran… I just ran and ran and ran…_

But now that medicine is sliding on down, lying heavy in his stomach, and Raife doesn't know how to turn back time.

He doesn't know how to beg for forgiveness. He doesn't know how to get the young girl Ashley once was to see him and recognize the regret in his eyes.

Because his face is still tattooed with his failings.

And Ashley's gaze is no longer that of a child, all goofy smiles and boisterous laughter…

…Ashley's gaze is a lot like his the day he left her – hollow and removed, only seeing the way out and never the way back in.

"Ashley—"

"I'll empty out the desk and you can start looking for someone else today."

"You don't have to **quit**, Ashley. Stop being irrational—"

"Fuck you. Do you hear me? **Fuck**. **You**."

And now there is emotion in those eyes, but it is rage.

Raife stands by, chastised, as Ashley begins flinging open drawers and tossing items around and he can see that she is literally shaking, body set to an angry vibrate.

Her trembling is so bad that she drops a fountain pen and the ink goes everywhere all at once, random designs on papers and wood… just like a Rorschach test gone horribly wrong.

"I'll clean this up before I leave."

"Ashley, god, just **stop** for one second—"

"We have nothing to say to each other, okay? Nothing at all. The time for you and me talking and pretending to care for one another… its **long** gone. I don't want to be here and you never wanted me here—"

"No, you are wrong, Ashley. You are an asset here, to me and to the firm—"

"'An asset'? How **sweet**."

"Look, that's not what I mean… please, just sit down and we can talk this out…"

Ashley's hands are moving fast, slamming down onto the desktop and her fingers get covered in black ink – creating a new design, telling a new story and Raife is finally ready to hear it… _if she'll let me, if she'll actually say what needs to be said to me, if she'll trust me again…_

Because he has been prepping himself for this moment since Spencer Carlin dropped that bombshell on Christmas morning.

He has had to sit with the knowledge that, where it not for the workings of fate, Ashley wouldn't be here at all.

And there wouldn't have ever been an opportunity for Raife to ask for another chance with his daughter, to try and mend the wounds he inflicted, to be the father he used to be.

He'd be crying his laments to a tombstone and there would be no reply from the little girl that was once his very world.

But where he expects shouting or tears or both, it is just Ashley's voice – empty and almost void of feeling, like the pressure of her palms pushing down on the surface of the desk took all her fight out of her.

And Raife realizes just how far he truly has to go in order to get back what he threw away, a road stretched out… a million miles and counting…

"Just let me go. It's what you are good at, right? So… just let me **go**."

It isn't like pleading, for it is too weak and too passionless.

It is a lot like giving up. Ashley, belly bared and on her back, ready for the kick that's been coming for all this time – not at all like the girl Raife once knew, who climbed too high at the jungle-gym… _even when I told her, sternly, to get back down._

But there she was, on top of metal bars and giggling, because she believed she could fly and for all of Raife's worry… he was proud of his child, who showed no fear and who found all of life a joy.

_That girl is gone and I helped her disappear… how can I expect her to forgive me when I can't see forgiving myself any time soon? How can I fix something that has been broken for so long?_

_How can I stop her from slipping further away?_

_How can I prevent… what she was going to do… when I am the one who pushed her to that place?_

Raife doesn't have a single answer, not within his lawyer mind or in all the books he had to study in school or within his own not-so-bulletproof life.

It is daunting and it is a high-dive into a glass of water and God knows… Raife can't imagine anyone more inept at making amends then he is…

_But…_

_But… this is my daughter, this is my child – bright and beautiful and left alone for too damn long…_

…and if it is the last thing he ever accomplishes, Raife Davies intends to get her back.

"I've let you go too many times already, Ashley. I won't do it again. I won't **ever** do it again."

Her face is not a mask, it is a reality. She doesn't believe a word coming out of his mouth and he expects no less than that.

It just doesn't stop him this time.

He forges ahead, taking that first step on that road… hoping and praying that, one day, Ashley might meet him half-way.

_One day… one day… one day…_

"All I ask is that you stay, just stay and don't leave… and let's, I don't know, get dinner or something…"

"I won't kill myself over you, alright? No need to put on this act. I promise not to ruin your good name in the papers or anything."

"I don't give a **damn** about the papers or anything else. I just… I just want to talk to you, to talk **with** you."

"**Don't** do this."

"Ashley—"

Her eyes light up and those stained fingers fist the ruined papers beneath them and Raife settles himself for the endless walk before him.

"**No**! You don't get to do this, you don't get to play the 'Dad' with me. **Got it**?"

"I **want** to be your father again!"

His own voice is so loud and Ashley's face is frozen – contorted somewhere between wistful love and burning hate, trapped between a time where his comment would have meant everything and where it means absolutely nothing.

"…You should have always wanted it."

And she breaks, she crumbles, she shakes down the sadness like the boughs of a tree in a gale.

And Raife reaches out, slowly, placing his hand upon one of her own.

And she doesn't grab onto him, but she doesn't pull away either.

"I know… and I am so sorry… I am **so** sorry, so sorry…"

He just keep repeating it, over and over, as tears quietly fall from his eyes… as Ashley cries as well, make-up taken away and leaving pale trails along her lovely face…

And Raife keeps on holding her hand.

And Ashley doesn't return the hold, but she still doesn't pull away.

Raife knows it isn't much, but he'll take it – he'll take it and run with it for as long as she'll let him.

/// /// ///

TBC


	12. how you leave

"Spencer…"

Her eyelids flutter open slowly, mimicking quite convincingly the act of waking up.

And maybe, in her own way, she is finally waking up.

The stars up above register first, faint in the distant sky, and then the moon shifting in-and-out of clouds.

But there is warmth around her and she takes note of Raphael's arms still holding her.

_Right. Raphael is here. This isn't some horrible dream, where I am going to wake up in New York and everything will be as it used to be… Nope. No chance of that is there, God? …Didn't think so._

"I'm here."

"It's time to go."

"…Oh."

And then his embrace is gone as he stands up, offering a hand to her – which she takes – and then they are side by side again.

The crowds of people that were there during the day have drifted off, back to their homes or to their friends or to somewhere else that feels welcoming.

Everyone is going somewhere and Spencer is, too… whether she wants to or not.

"I need to say good-bye to her."

"You can't. She can no longer see you, remember?"

"But I can't just up and leave her… I can't be another person to just let her down…"

"Spencer—"

"At least let me see her, then! I'm **going**, aren't I? I'm leaving her… I'm letting her go and I am going back with you… and… and I **have** to see her one more time, okay?"

Raphael's stare is hard, but not without understanding.

And Spencer is so tired of crying – she's cried more as an angel than she ever did as a human and all of this seems to cut deeper than anything else… deeper than coming out and having her mother turn away, deeper than those relationships that didn't work out or those friendships that died with the passing of time…

_Nothing has ever hurt as much as this._

"It won't make things any easier for you. It'll just make it hurt more."

"…I don't think that is possible."

"Ultimately it is up to you. We can find her and you can see her… then we really have to go. Our time down here is up."

And Spencer wants Raphael's promises to come true sooner rather than later.

She wants the day where this doesn't rip her phantom heart out to be today.

She wants for all of this to not matter so much and not feel so painfully final.

She wants to forget about this useless love she has developed for a woman she can never have.

Spencer just wants to not feel anything at all.

/// /// ///

Little details embed themselves somewhere in Spencer's mind, like fish getting caught in a net, and they are the kind of things that don't mean much – the door to this quiet restaurant is blue, the waiters all have starched white shirts, the air is full with the smells of rich spices and the walls are a clay-colored red.

And she even sees Raphael lingering by another table, head cocked to the side as he listens to some couple talk – she sees the angel smile softly and then take a piece of naan from them.

But no one is startled. No one sees bread moving without a hand attached.

It's like he isn't there at all.

But these are all things witnessed in the peripheral of Spencer's vision.

Because her focus is only on one table, one couple, one person.

Ashley Davies and her father sit by the window, glasses of water forming damp rings on the tablecloth.

Spencer can tell that Raife Davies is nervous by the way his hands keep moving, fingers tapping a discordant tune.

Beyond that, though, she can see that something has changed – in his eyes, swirling in that electric blue, is sorrow and want and a million other emotions.

And all of them are directed at his daughter opposite him.

That's who Spencer is truly watching, though.

Ashley's face is trying so hard to be stoic, but there is wariness to each and every corner – by the gaze that keeps darting from her father and then to anywhere else, on the brow as it constricts and never smoothes out.

Ashley is trying so hard to not give in to what is obviously changing and Spencer wonders what occurred after that door was slammed in her face.

_Who made the first move? Who broke down and saw what could be? _

But it doesn't matter – none of that matters, not really – because father and daughter are talking.

And it is halting. And it is wounded. And it sounds a lot like strangers.

But it is a start and Raife Davies looks like a man saved at the last minute from execution.

His gaze is steady and thankful and Spencer thinks he looks a lot like her father used to… _proud from the doorway, waving at me as I got off the bus from my first day at school…_

And Ashley's look isn't the same sad glance either.

It is still a bit broken. It is still a bit scared.

But Spencer is looking close and she is diving in deep and in that golden stare is the ghost of who Ashley used to be – a girl who loved her father, a girl who believed in goodness, a girl who just wants to be loved.

And it is a start.

And Spencer wishes she could reach out, could pull Ashley into her arms and tell her how happy she is for them both… and… and…

_Oh God, why are you __**doing**__ this to me? Did I really live such a bad life when I was alive? Did I not forgive my mother? Was I not kind enough? Did I hurt someone and forget to regret it? _

_Was it those commandments? Did I break them too often?_

_Should I have gone to church more often? Were my prayers too frivolous?_

_How could I end up in heaven… and it feel like hell?_

"You should be proud of yourself, too." Raphael murmurs by her ear.

"I feel like shit."

"C'mon, girl, don't do this… You stumbled and you made some mistakes, but look at them, Spencer. **Look** at them. They are talking and they are trying to make amends. You did what you were sent to do."

Father and daughter are talking – sometimes hushed, sometimes harsh – but there are a few moments where they come to some kind of common ground.

It flashes in Raife's shy smile and it runs fast across Ashley's lips in response.

And it is a start, no longer an ending.

And it should make Spencer feel good about herself – she didn't completely fuck up, she didn't let this person kill themselves… and she saved Ashley Davies.

She did just what she was brought to Earth to do.

She saved a woman from suicide – she got to be the Clarence to Ashley's George Bailey – and now that woman's life can go on… with purpose, with hope, with a chance at happiness.

"I did what I was sent to do… and I did a few things I wasn't meant to as well." Spencer whispers aloud, her hand now a fist by her side – her body not to be trusted because it wants so badly to move and go to the woman she is having to set free from her care.

_How can you ask us to rescue them and then ask us to just walk away, hmm, God? How can you toss us down here, to all this… living and breathing… and then tell us to give it up again?_

_How am I supposed to exist forever, up there in the sky, when everything in me longs to be here… with her? _

She watches Raife pay for the meal and she watches Ashley grab her coat and she watches them hesitate – for that brief second – before they hug one another.

And she watches Raife as his eyes cloud over with unshed tears.

And she watches Ashley's eyes close, watches as that confusion and worry fade for a moment… leaving the woman more beautiful than ever.

_Just like that night in the rain. Just like that sleepy kiss to my face as the sun broke through the morning. _

_God, she is just so lovely… she is the most beautiful creature in the universe… _

…_and I am not afraid to say that I love her more than anyone I have ever known._

"Spencer—"

"No, please… not yet."

"How much more, Spencer? It'll never be enough, I **know**…"

"Just… just let me follow her home, make sure she gets home safely. That's all… then we can go, okay? Then… then we can go…"

Raphael's eyes say so much, speaking about pity and concern, and she pushes past him – head whipping around until she spots that familiar face.

And Ashley is waving off her father's offer of a ride, opting to walk the several blocks to wherever she lives.

Ashley is moving at a languid pace down the sidewalk, arms swinging back and forth, and Spencer is right behind her – memorizing curves and taking a mental picture of every time a streetlight gleams in the woman's cascading hair.

Then Spencer is beside Ashley, walking backwards in order to watch the woman's face – the blink of the eyelids, the gaze that flickers to shop windows, the way Ashley's teeth sometimes gently bite and tug on that bottom lip, the whisper of concentration that lingers on the forehead.

She follows Ashley up stairs and down a hallway. She follows Ashley into her huge apartment, barely noticing the artwork on the walls or the expensive looking furniture or all the baubles of a well-paid lawyer.

She watches as Ashley toes off her shoes, left than right, and she imagines the sensation of each delicate toe pressing into the carpet below – almost envious of the floor.

She follows Ashley into what must be the woman's bedroom and Spencer forces her stare away as the woman undresses – knowing that this is like angelic stalking, but still trying to be the better person… even though it is tempting to look anyway.

And Spencer lovingly sweeps over the woman's body as it is in a tank-top and shorts, miles of skin on display and all of it so gorgeous – tan and seemingly supple, muscles moving under flesh, the way the neck connects so perfectly to the shoulders…

_God, I mean no disrespect… and maybe, one day, like Raphael says… I'll be over this._

_But right now, I kind of hate you._

She watches as Ashley digs around a closet and pulls out a tattered box, opening up the dust-covered memories – photos and notes and pieces of a past that Spencer only knows a little bit about.

And she watches as emotions run wild over Ashley's face, as silent weeping hangs heavy in this room.

Spencer twists her own hands together, so desperate to reach out and knowing that she cannot.

_Not anymore. Not ever again._

And Spencer cries right with the woman, but they are sad for different reasons on this night.

For Ashley, it is what used to be finally seeing the light and ready to be healed.

For Spencer, it is just… the end of all she could have had.

"Let's go."

Raphael beckons from outside this bedroom, standing by the front door.

And Spencer rises up, shaking and sobbing, taking one last look at Ashley Davies – sitting on the floor, crossed-legged and hair up in a messy ponytail, with a box full of everything that made her who she is on her lap… and Spencer is proud of this woman.

And Spencer is grateful of the fact that she got to know Ashley at all, grateful that she got to save Ashley from that deadly jump, grateful that she got to experience this woman's anger and this woman's humor and this woman's affection.

And it is all too much, too soon, too heady and too wonderful and too awful – it is all of these things simultaneously, beating down on Spencer's mind like a hammer.

She is backing out of the room and Raphael is suddenly there, hugging her tight from behind and she is falling. She is falling and not even an angel can save her this time.

She is falling and it isn't even a cold New York subway.

She is crashing and burning like so many before her, all her love and longing just fallen soldiers in a war she could never hope to win.

"How d-do I say good b-bye? H-How?"

"By degrees. Day by day. For as long as it takes… and you have forever to mend."

But that just makes her cry harder.

/// /// ///

"I **need** to do this."

"We are **already** late."

"We have all the time in the world. Didn't you say that?"

"…Yes."

"Then let me do this."

"Will the truth come out any better like this, Spencer?"

"If I am to do this right, then I have to end it. I can't just start something and not end it."

"I suppose…"

"You know I am right."

"No, I don't know that. I just understand is all."

"Then that will have to do, won't it?"

Raphael waits out in the hallway. Ashley still sits in her bedroom, surrounded by tokens of another time.

And Spencer searches until she finds what she is looking for – stuffed in some drawer in the kitchen, battered pages of a notebook and a few pens.

And she writes a version of reality down – leaving out those things that could never be explained, even if they were face to face – but she tells more than she probably should.

She lingers around certain facts – the feelings that have burrowed into her bones and the ache that fills her up even now, the joy at their unexpected closeness and the sadness at their inevitable parting… and it borders on melodramatic, some kind of Shakespearian 'Dear John' letter.

But Spencer cannot stop herself now.

Because she has to say good-bye and she won't just disappear without a single word and she won't be one of the people who let Ashley Davies down – even though… even though…

_Even though I am being forced to do so. Even though I have to go. I won't leave here without telling her how I feel… how __**much**__ I feel for her…_

She folds it up and she steps out of the apartment and she shuts the door with a soft click.

And placing the missive half out, half in – there between the floor and the door is Spencer Carlin's heart.

Raphael takes her hand and they begin to walk down the hall, but both of their heads turn at the sound of the door reopening.

And Spencer stands breathless, all the air she doesn't really need is sucked away from the lungs that she doesn't really use… because there is Ashley, brown eyes looking unsure around the hallway.

"…Hello?" Ashley asks quietly.

For a minute, Spencer allows herself to believe that Ashley knows she is there.

But the eyes that look around do not see Spencer or Raphael. They just see an empty walkway and shadows and the glare of another buildings lights across the street.

There is the sound of paper being stepped on, though, and Ashley kneels down slowly.

And Spencer is moving from Raphael, ignoring his voice full of protest.

She is standing by the open door, taking one side and placing her palms flat against the surface as Ashley stands on the other side and reads the declaration that Spencer left at her feet.

But then Ashley is moving, swift like the breeze, gaze darting back and forth and searching… seeking… looking for a sign that the girl who wrote that letter is still around. Spencer wants to scream and let the woman know she **is** there – right there and waiting, right there and wanting, right there and willing to give anything to be seen again.

It isn't happening that way, though.

Because this was just a moment, just a blip, just a second in an hourglass full of sand.

This was just a woman needing to be saved.

This was just a job to be completed.

It wasn't meant to be need and desire. It wasn't meant to be kisses and forever.

It wasn't meant to be Christmas morning in an office and secrets shared.

_Falling in love isn't meant to be like this… is it, God?_

They stand there, silent, Ashley about to go back into her apartment and Spencer about to fade away.

And only this cut slab of wood separates them.

Only time and space and life and death keep them apart.

"I love you…" Spencer whispers, her face averted, and she finally lets Raphael pull her back – his hand firm and strong, tugging her from this world.

And, though she would later believe that she had to have imagined it, Spencer thought she heard Ashley Davies softly respond… right before the door shut and all Spencer could see was white light…

"…I love you, too…"

/// /// ///

**TBC**

**For real, was that not just epically angsty? [lol]**


	13. the end is the beginning 1

_**Did you live well?**_

_I hope so. That life is so long ago now… I am not even sure of how many years have passed since I was down there and actually alive. But I tried my best to live a life worthy of… well, being alive at all. I can't say whether I succeeded or not. Who can?_

_**Did you help others?**_

_Probably not as much as I should have, you know… But I don't think it makes me a bad person, when I was a person that is… I think it is part of what made me human. I wanted to help and I tried to do so, but I didn't always do a good job of it. I had flaws… but I kept trying. I kept trying to help myself, too. I kept trying. That's all anyone can do, right?_

_**Did you live up to your potential?**_

_What a loaded question. I used to daydream, when I was a child, about what my life would be like… having a home and a cool job and a car, maybe someone to share it with… maybe kids, maybe not… I didn't live up to those dreams, not totally. That particular 'potential' was buried when I was. But if you mean… well, if you mean a more personal potential, then… sometimes, yes. Most times, yes. I stood by my convictions, as few as they were. I think I was well on my way to fulfilling my own fate. I certainly hope so anyway…_

_**Are you, or have you ever been, content with the life you've had thus far?**_

_Down there, on Earth, I was… satisfied enough. I mean, I got up and went to work. I would spend my weekends with friends, sometimes, or just laze around the city. I wasn't unhappy. But… I don't think I was totally content either. I think I was in an unaware state of waiting. I was waiting for the next big thing, the next rush of emotion or action… I was just waiting for something more to come along and push me to somewhere… better. Of course, that 'something' finally happened, just not when I was living. It had to happen after I died. So, I guess you could say that I didn't find contentment until my afterlife… does that count at all up here? Because, to me, it means everything._

/// /// ///

It doesn't look any different than the first time.

Still looks like an office. There are a few new faces, slightly bewildered eyes and open mouths, the newly acquired dead – but other than that, everything is as she left it.

Michael gives her a nod and a pat on the back.

Raphael sighs loudly and stretches, making sure to tell her that 'none of this means we are friends or anything'… but it is said lightly and it drags the first tiny smile onto her face in what seems like a long damn time.

Gabe gives her what is best described as a bear-hug, nearly picking her up off the ground, and that tiny smile becomes bittersweet – no longer anchored to a moment of brief humor, but lashed tightly to circumstances way beyond her control.

"Before you fully settle back in, let's talk, okay?" Gabe's voice is soft in her ear and she merely nods, allowing him to guide her from the office.

Her eyes look around simply, taking in aspects she had not been shown before – endless doorways to places she does not know… and, frankly, could care less about right now. Gabe steers her into a large room, which appears to be a common area, with various people milling about – all shapes and sizes, all angels she supposes – and gently pushes her to sit down on a couch.

They sit side by side and Spencer leans her head back, staring up and noticing – for the first time – that there isn't really a ceiling to this place.

"It looks like the sky." She says softly.

She can hear the smile in Gabe's voice as he responds.

"That was the first thing I liked about here when I arrived. I always dislike being cooped up for too long and found great comfort in being able to just… look up and see the outside, to know I wasn't far from what I love."

"Must be nice."

And just like that, she is reminded. Not that she has forgotten. The trip from Earth to Heaven (_or Heaven's eternal waiting room_) felt like seconds, but it was probably so much longer than that.

It could have been weeks or months. Even years.

She has no way of knowing how much time has passed anymore.

And she isn't sure that she cares, not really.

"Do you know what angels truly **are**, Spencer?"

"Is this a trick question, Gabe? Because, to be perfectly honest, I don't have the energy for games today."

"No games, Spencer. Just a question that I am curious to know if you can answer."

She exhales and keeps her gaze on the shades of blue above her, some of it light and some of it dark… sometimes a cotton-like cloud or two… and Spencer tries her best to actually think of something to say.

But it is like the connection between her mind and her mouth is dormant.

It is like all the words she knows have dried up in her throat. It is like she cannot muster more than the blink of eyelids – and even that seems to wear her out.

_It's like I died a while ago, but now I am really dead._

But Gabe is not deterred by her silence. He hands over the solution with a sure tone, calm and steady.

"We are the best of everyone, that's what we are. We are the fingers that wipe away tears in the middle of the night. We are the voices of every tireless revolution, speaking out when others hold their tongues. We are every heart that learns to beat after breaking, every heart that learns to forgive and every heart that learns to love."

Spencer keeps on staring upward, ignoring the cool path that tears are making down her face.

And Gabe reaches over, tender as always, and smoothes each teardrop away.

"You are the best of her, Spencer and not even God can take that from you, nor would God want to. And even though it does not feel this way now… your heart, too, will learn to beat after breaking. It's what we all saw in you and why you were brought here, you know? It is your heart and just how much it can feel. It is what makes you such an amazing angel."

Spencer allows a small and wounded laugh to escape her lips, turning from the ceiling full of sky and facing Gabriel – his palm now cupping her jaw and his eyes, as always, warm with caring.

"You saying that I could have avoided all this if I had been more of a bitch?"

And Gabe chuckles, pulling her over and she lets him – grateful for the compassion, grateful for another hug, grateful to cry more if she has to and to have his shoulder to catch her sorrow, grateful that… even with all this pain… she actually, really and truly, saved someone.

Spencer Carlin saved someone's soul and it hurts like hell.

But it is also the most wonderful feeling in the entire universe.

Because maybe this is what she was meant for all along and maybe she was not meant to live down there, in the rat-race and working some shit job… maybe she was always intended to die when she did and maybe she was meant to…

…_save Ashley Davies from herself, to show the woman what she was worth… so that she could finally show the rest of the world, too._

It doesn't stop the anguish within her. It doesn't end her longing. It doesn't soothe her loss.

But it's something.

And Spencer cannot help but cherish it, to hold it close and to feel pleased.

_I saved you and you, in turn, saved me. _

And it doesn't end the love she feels for a woman so far away.

It just makes it that much stronger.

/// /// ///

It's not been easy, but then… he knew it would not be.

But every time he comes up against a wall, Raife Davies just finds another way to traverse it – whether through words (_apologies and honesty and confessions_) or through actions (_a smile, a nod, a hug, a hand to hold_).

And it is working, slowly but surely, it is working.

He is releasing the past and gaining a future.

He is losing the regret and earning a daughter.

Raife is finally back to square one – being a father first.

And it is a transformation that is changing everything. Raife offered to hand over more responsibility to Ashley, to show her just how much he really does trust her and her talents in the courtroom – but wasn't surprised to hear her refuse it.

Nor was he that surprised to see her still pack up her things and quit the firm all together.

_That little girl, with her pigtails and her gap-toothed smile… she was never meant for an office._

_She was meant for the world, to be out in it and giving it hell – and loving every second of it._

Three months since that dinner, where they decided to bury the mistakes and start anew… three months and Raife sometimes wonders why he waited so damn long to make this right.

But fear is a funny thing and it'll nail you to the ground, if you let it.

_And I certainly let it do just that, for a long time… but not anymore… never again._

He leans against the wall with his arms crossed and a faint smile on his lips.

Ashley tosses everything into a box, except for a lime-green stapler.

"You know that that thing is a coveted item around here, don't you?"

"Yea, I'll give it to Chelsea and she can take up guarding it."

"So… what now?"

"Uh, well… I was thinking of just taking a break for a while, you know, from everything…"

"Sounds like a good idea. It's been an intense couple of months."

"Understatement."

They both chuckle and Raife likes this more than he could ever let on, but he endeavors to do just that.

He no longer keeps his emotions in check, not with Ashley.

He lets them all out – for better or worse – because it is what the girl before him deserves.

"How about after this break, hmm? Still gonna do what you talked about the other day?"

Ashley rolls her eyes, a little annoyed and a little playful, and Raife's smile widens.

"Hey, just because we are getting along doesn't mean you get to be all… 'father knows best' with me, okay?"

"What if I **do** know best?"

"What if you **don't**?"

"You were always like this, you know… answering a question with a question."

"It's a talent I have."

"Well… I am not trying to interfere, you know that. I just… I want you to do what makes you happy and I want you to know that I support you, no matter what it is."

Ashley nears him, box wrapped up in her arms, and she smiles at him – a real smile, the kind that he used to love seeing at the end of each day, coming into a house of running feet and boundless energy.

"I get it. And… well… thank you. It, uh… means a lot to me."

And she ducks her head just a bit, the faint tinge of pink to her cheeks and Raife pulls her to him – relishing that he can do this again and that they both want it to occur and he feels another scar on his heart begin to heal… along with all the others that have begun to mend.

And he is eternally grateful that she has taken him back, despite all his failings.

And he is eternally grateful that he took that first step, walking into her office that morning, even though he was terrified.

But more than that, Raife Davies wishes he could say 'thank you' to Spencer Carlin, the girl who looked at him with angry blue eyes and told him about a daughter he was about to lose forever.

That is a topic, though, that Ashley does not speak of.

He asked once and Ashley's swift look shut him out again, a look not of anger… but of absolute sorrow, brief but there nonetheless.

And Raife isn't going to push his daughter, finding it best to allow her to speak of things when they arise.

But he does wonder what happened to Spencer Carlin, the last time seeing her with the shutting of an office door. And then she didn't show up for work. And a call to the only number available on file found it disconnected.

It was as if the girl just disappeared from L.A. all together.

_If only she knew that, through her comment to me that day… that I have received the greatest of gifts… I have my daughter back. I have my second chance._

Raife presses a kiss to Ashley's temple and then pulls back, soaking in Ashley's tiny grin and the flash of those brown eyes.

"Want to do lunch?"

"Uh, well… I've got some things to do and I might be out of town for a couple of days."

"Oh. Anything I should know about?"

"Nope."

And she winks, moving past him and down the hall, saying good-bye to various people. There are nods and pats on the back. Chelsea rushes over and gathers Ashley in a huge embrace, swaying them from side to side and he can see Ashley laughing just a bit.

_And this is only the beginning, a wonderful and new start for us all… _

Raife watches his daughter walk out those glass doors, until she is out of sight, and then he goes back to work. But not before sending up more thanks, to God or Buddha or whomever it might be out there that makes wishes come true.

_And to you, too, Spencer Carlin… wherever you may be… thanks to you, too._

/// /// ///

Ashley Davies, on a night three months ago, sat in her bedroom and looked at photographs – frozen images of her parents when they were still married and snapshots of herself and Kyla, parties filled up with ice cream and games.

And she leafed silently through bits and pieces of her childhood – a ticket stub, a card or two, a note she once wrote to her father and never gave him… faded blue ink that asked for reasons as to why things were falling apart and how could she fix it…

She had held onto these things, but rarely acknowledged them, stubbornly not wanting to be reminded of all that used to be.

But that night, three months ago, changed everything.

Or maybe the night that truly changed everything was further back than that, a night where the usual listlessness with one parent was quickly followed by the usual fight with the other parent – and Ashley felt like the walls were closing in on her, overwhelming pressure coming at her from every side… and all the ways she had employed before in order to survive (_the alcohol, the sex, even the drugs_), they did not seem to be enough, not that time, not that night.

The phone fell from her hand. And the tears came unwittingly from her eyes.

Her feet were moving ahead of every other part of her body and she welcomed it – it was a numb sort of feeling, as if her legs were on auto-pilot… as if her heart had finally given up, its last order being the suggestion of…

_Ending. Stopping. Quitting._

And your body has to obey the messages sent out, even if they are counterproductive to staying alive.

That night, Ashley ran down the hall and she didn't feel the chilliness of the faintly lit stairwell as she climbed higher. Her palms pushed the door open, a door that really should have been locked, and there was not a single pause in her steps.

There was the edge of the roof, surrounded by cityscape and distant lights and the night sky, and Ashley didn't stop walking. She kept walking and moving and she kept crying as her whole body tipped forward.

And for a few seconds, Ashley Davies felt what she thought peace would feel like.

A rush of air against her face and not a single thought in her head anymore… just the heavy quiet of impending death… and she honestly welcomed it.

Because she had tried to forget and she had tried to pretend and she had tried to become as hard as her mother, as aloof as her father, as vapid as her sister.

She had tried and she had failed… and it was time to end her farce of a life.

But that night changed everything.

_Or, rather, __**you**__ changed everything… didn't you, Spencer?_

Everyone, except her father and probably Chelsea, seems to have forgotten the woman completely.

Out of sight and out of mind, because a new secretary will always pop up in place of the old one and, really, it isn't that hard to file documents and copy papers.

That revolving door of women (and some men) do not stand out in a business as big as this one and, so, Spencer Carlin recedes as swiftly as the tide from everyone's collective consciousness.

But Ashley remembers Spencer.

Sometimes she'll be sitting and looking out her apartment window, but it isn't the streets she is seeing or the traffic or the ocean only a mile away – she is seeing blue eyes, reflecting concern when least expected or a delicate strand of golden hair, the color caught by sunlight on the beach…

…_your hand in mine, soft skin and the solid touch of your lips to my own… your face, smiling and the warmth of your body close… __**god**__, do I remember you, Spencer…_

She's read the letter more than once, almost not able to absorb it the night it was delivered – like a thief, slipping in and out of Ashley's life with a few paragraphs.

And each time she reads it, the words get a little more beautiful and a little more horrible.

Because, yes, it is full of love – the kind that aches and the kind that hopes and the kind that dreams are made of. But it is also filled with resignation and remorse… it is also filled with a sense of the inevitable, as if their meeting was just a link in the chain of fate, one that neither of them could have foreseen – nor control or bend to their own personal will.

She kept quiet about it all, though, opting to not say a thing to anyone – not to Chelsea, who merely inquired and not to her father, who was there to witness her and Spencer's last interaction.

_It shouldn't have ended like that either. I shouldn't have slammed the door in your face. I shouldn't have yelled at you. I shouldn't have cut you out like that._

But her self-recriminations simply married the letter that Spencer left for her and she hoped to lock it all away within, keep it with all the other treasures of her past – in that dusty box, in that shadowed place in her heart.

Life just doesn't work out like that, though.

For the more she tried to ignore the woman, the more she thought about the woman. And the more she thought about Spencer Carlin, the more she wanted to find Spencer Carlin.

Which is why she started searching, starting with an easy name inquiry online (_which turned up way more men than women and kept on separating the first and last name_). The file from work gave a previous law-firm, which – oddly enough – had closed down fifteen years ago.

And the closest she had gotten to any real information was that a Spencer Carlin had rented an apartment in New York – five years ago.

_Which makes no sense, since she just moved here from New York in December… right? So, that can't be her… which puts me back at not knowing a damn thing to help me find her._

That is, until yesterday.

Out of all the feelers she put online, most of them in the state of New York and associated with law-firms, it was the one she sent towards Ohio that came up with anything useful.

_And confusing as __**fuck**__, don't forget that, Ashley._

It was an article from some local newspaper (_from the year __**1997**__…_) in Highland Heights, Ohio – all about a girl named Spencer Carlin, who had one of the highest GPA's in the state and was being looked at by several colleges… _some of them Ivy League_… and how Spencer Carlin got some award, was at some banquet with her parents and two brothers and… and…

_That was a __**long**__ time ago. This can't be right, this can't be __**her**__… _

But Ashley searched out the parents names online, saw a picture of the mother – a doctor – and Ashley's chest actually began to hurt… _because this Paula Carlin looks so much like Spencer, it's not even __**funny**__._

And Ashley isn't sure what to make of any of this.

_As if my life isn't already crazy enough… maybe I should just let it go, maybe I should just let things be… I mean, I might have shut the door… but __**she**__ left L.A. That letter wasn't anything more than a good-bye and she obviously doesn't want to be found… at least not by me._

But she feels the kiss from her father on her temple and she feels Chelsea's strong embrace and she thinks of this brave new world that is opening up to her… and the only thing missing from this picture is Spencer Carlin.

And Ashley cannot let Spencer go.

_Cannot? I don't __**want to**__. Simple as that really._

So, she calls the hospital and gets a bit of a runaround. Then she digs around online for a personal phone number, which she calls and no one answers.

Which is why, against all sane judgment, Ashley Davies finds herself on a plane – with just an overnight bag and a letter she has read more times than she'd like to admit – heading towards Ohio and secretly hoping to find the woman who completely altered her entire world.

/// /// ///

**TBC**


	14. the end is the beginning 2

Mini-vans and cookie-cutter houses, all two stories tall, yards with swing sets and garbage cans by the edge of each driveway - just waiting to be emptied…

_So __**this**__ is what the suburbs look like._

Born and raised in L.A., where there is more pavement than grass and lights don't go out at eleven o'clock at night, Ashley Davies is telling no lie when she says that a little place like this one is a bit of a revelation.

It is exactly what it appears to be – families and Sunday dinners and soccer moms.

_And this is where she grew up, where she learned that smile and that laugh… _

She stands across from one brick and off-white home, studying the flat stone walkway and the red front door and the row of small shrubs under a bay window – shiny leaves in the new spring sun.

Her cell phone rests heavily in her hand as she leans against this rented automobile, the number she has saved just waiting to be dialed… and yet, she hesitates.

_Because I must be absolutely crazy, right?_

_I have just flown from L.A. to Ohio, with mostly online information as my only back up, all to track down a former employee… who left willingly… who wrote me a letter filled up with… with…_

She doesn't need to pull the folded piece of paper out, because she has the words practically memorized now. They run across her brain like the wall-street ticker, an endless stream of sentences that make sense… and no sense… all at the same time.

///

_**Ashley,**_

_**I don't even know how to start this thing now that I am trying…**_

///

She takes a deep breath.

She raises the phone to her ear.

She listens to it ring – once, twice, three times – but then a male voice picks up.

And Ashley releases that breath, letting it shudder out of her lungs.

"Hello?"

"Um, yes, hello… Is this… Mr. Carlin? Arthur Carlin?"

"Yes it is."

"Hello Mr. Carlin, uh… uh… god, this is going to sound **insane**…"

But the man sort of chuckles and Ashley isn't sure how to take that reaction (_can't be totally bad, right?_) and she tries to pull herself together, to gather her rapidly scattering thoughts and purpose.

"Well, start with your name and then I'll be the judge of that."

_That's where you got from, isn't it Spencer? From him, your father… you got that dry sense of humor, that ability to not get ruffled…_

And it calms Ashley's nerves just a bit to realize that little tid-bit and she clears her throat.

"My name is Ashley Davies and… well, I am kind of a friend of Spencer's…"

_That's not a complete lie either. We __**are**__ friends. Kind of. I mean, I think we are a lot more than that… but that's not just something you blurt out to a parent…_

"…Oh. Well, then… it is wonderful to speak with you."

His voice is soft and warm and Ashley feels an incredible amount of love in that comment – love for a blonde haired and blue eyed daughter - and it causes Ashley to flush with heat, too.

Because she gets it, she really does… even though it was quick and unexpected… Ashley gets it.

Because Spencer makes her feel the same way, suffused with deep affection and wondrous love.

_I'd have to be smitten to do __**any**__ of this…_

"Now, uh, the crazy part is that I am here… as in Ohio, I mean, as in Highland Heights… and I was wondering if we could, um, if we could meet and you might be able to tell me how to find her."

_There. Got the whole thing out without too much stumbling. Now let's see if he stays as friendly._

"…Find her?" Arthur Carlin questions.

"I know. You think I am a lunatic, don't you? I **promise** you I'm not."

"Ms… Davies, was it?"

"Yes."

"You say you are in Highland Heights right now?"

"…Uh, yea."

"I… I think we need to talk and I'd rather do this in person. Is there any chance you could take down an address if I give one to you?"

"Oh. Well, that's the thing… I'm, uh, actually outside your house…"

She has enough intelligence to sound sheepish, which is not far from the truth.

And she watches as the front door opens and a man looks straight at her, head cocked to the side.

But he slowly motions her over and Ashley shuts her phone with an audible click.

///

…_**you ever want to say a lot and then when you have the chance… nothing comes out?**_

_**Or it doesn't come out the way you want it to?**_

_**I have so much I want to say to you. But I am going to start with… I'm sorry. I am so sorry, Ashley. **_

_**I am so sorry that I betrayed the trust you gave to me. I can tell you, honestly, that I did so because I care… I more than care. I think I kind of care about you more than anyone.**_

_**Okay. I don't think it. I know it.**_

///

Arthur Carlin, unlike his daughter and Spencer's mother, has dark hair – black with definite silver streaked through it – and while the eyes are different from Spencer's as well… there is delicateness to their gaze that makes a tiny smile break out over Ashley's lips.

_I was right. That's where you get it from, Spencer. All that kindness is there in his eyes, too._

He is watching her face, running over the features – not in a rude way, but more like an appraisal of sorts – and Ashley allows it.

She is the stranger here. She is the weird woman, calling up out of the blue, trying to find the man's child. He has a right to size her up.

"Let's go inside, Ms. Davies."

They step in, one after the other, and she looks around briefly – taking in the stairwell and the knick knacks of well-lived in home, the flowers by the door (_dried and faded pink_) and the sound of a grandfather clock, its ticking the only disruption of a steady silence.

And then, she sees it, on the wall like a gallery – she catches a cavalcade of Spencer Carlin in picture form.

"…Is that her?" Ashley asks quietly and Arthur Carlin follows her stare, smiling as he does so.

"Oh, yes. We seem to put up a new one each year that goes by."

"May I take a closer look?"

Arthur looks at her thoughtfully once more, something decidedly wistful in those kind eyes, and Ashley isn't sure how it makes her feel.

But she puts it down to the oddness of this whole situation. She puts it down to the fact that, up until about three months or so ago, she wasn't used to feeling much of anything.

_Besides anger. Besides sadness. Besides hate._

But he gives his consent with a subtle nod of his head.

Her steps are soft as she gets closer, attempting to take in this apparent memory lane as best she can.

Spencer Carlin, pig-tails and big grin, clinging to an annoyed looking boy in a baseball uniform.

Spencer Carlin, posed in front of a gray back-screen, vaguely placid expression marred by the hint of something devilish in the corners of that safe smile.

Spencer Carlin, laughing beside that annoyed boy – who is older in this particular photograph and not so annoyed – and young black man is there, too. They are all laughing actually.

Spencer Carlin with a medal and cheesy thumbs-up. Spencer Carlin with a trophy and a smirk.

Spencer Carlin, just a tiny thing and holding up a Christmas gift, baby blonde hair a mess.

And Ashley feels a smile creeping up on her face, getting wider and wider with each glimpse into Spencer's past, and it only increases her desire to see the woman again.

_To talk to her. To apologize for blowing up. To ask her… to __**beg**__ her… to come back to L.A…. back to me…_

///

_**God knows, I wasn't looking for someone like you to fall into my world.**_

_**I had this plan. Or… I had this thing I just had to do and while you were a part of it… well, falling impossibly in love with you wasn't part of the plan.**_

_**I know I am not making any sense. And I am sorry for that, too. More than you can ever know.**_

_**But I had to let you know that… I love you. I am in love with you.**_

_**And it freaks me out to even write it down, because it is so true. So true and so strong and… and I have to leave it all behind. I have to leave you.**_

_**You, the one person I don't want to ever be apart from…**_

///

"Ms. Davies… um, let's sit down for a moment… would you like something to drink? We've got water or tea…?"

"Oh, no, I'm fine. Thank you anyway… these are all great, you know? She was a really cute kid."

Arthur Carlin smiles softly and nods his head in agreement and she can still see something there – beyond the kindness – and it looks a little frozen, just a little removed and if she were the type of person who could just console another, then that's what she would do.

Because Arthur Carlin looks like a man in need of comfort.

But for what, she just doesn't know. And she doesn't feel confident enough to ask the reasons why.

Ashley is changing every day that goes by, but she isn't that type of person. _Not just yet._

They sit, side by side, on a couch and she can feel his eyes on her and she ducks her head – like a little kid might – and suddenly she can't look at him, as if all her intentions are too obvious and then… maybe…

_He won't like what he sees. And then he'll ask me to leave. And I'll not find her._

But his hand comes down upon her own and alternates between patting it – like all fathers tend to do – and holding it lightly, as if she were the one who needs comforting.

And she finally looks up and something is there in Arthur Carlin's gaze, beyond the kindness and the unexplainable traces of sorrow that she fleetingly catches… and Ashley's heartbeat increases.

And she isn't sure why.

///

_**That night, up on the roof, right before you passed out… I should have known right then, you know? I should have known that I would never be able to just walk away after saving you.**_

_**I should have known that those eyes of yours would suck me in and that if I ever got to kiss you… well, that that would be all I'd ever want to do.**_

_**I wish… I wish I could just tell you everything about me. Where I've lived and what I used to do for fun and why I really came to L.A.**_

_**I wish I could hold you like I did on Christmas morning, but for a really long time. Like forever.**_

_**I wish I could have met you in another life, Ashley.**_

_**And in that other life, I would kiss you all the time. And run around locked up parks with you. And force you to watch old movies. And, god, I would marry you… I don't care if it isn't legal, I'd marry you and build you a house and make you waffles and… everything. I'd give you everything.**_

_**Because you deserve it, you know? You deserve it all.**_

_**Always believe that, okay? Always remember that you are worth so much. That's why I had to stop you from killing yourself that night. That's why I had to tell your father.**_

_**That's why I had to work for you and file all those stupid papers and put up with your snark…**_

_**Because you are worth it, Ashley. You are worth the whole of the world and it's about time you realize it. Like I have. Like I do.**_

///

"Even after all this time, I never know how to say this to anyone…" Arthur Carlin starts, his voice a rough rumble and that clock is muted now and the rest of the house is still so quiet.

And Ashley is holding her breath again.

And her heart is pounding so loudly, like drums in her ears.

And she feels nervous, but she cannot understand why… just that she is, terribly so.

"…but the comment you made, about 'finding' Spencer, well… I'm not sure when you last saw her, it must have been a while, but… five years ago, there was an accident…"

The word makes a distinct noise, perhaps like nails down a blackboard or a glass hitting hardwood floors, and the word seems to cut its way out of Arthur Carlin's mouth – painful and horrible slashes that only certain words can make.

And Ashley is rooted to her spot on this couch, the pounding of her heart almost to the point of drowning her, temples throbbing and she fights the urge to squint her eyes in protest to the sensation.

"…and it was pretty much instant, uh, the damage to her brain and… we lost her… we lost her…"

Arthur Carlin is holding her hand fully now and looking at her with a weary stare.

And Ashley blinks, with her heart thundering and blood rushing around her head.

And this time, when she blacks out, there is no beautiful blonde guardian to pull her back up again.

///

_**I'm rambling and I know it. I'm sorry. You are probably still so in the dark and I am sorry about that, sorry that that is how I have to be. But… I…**_

_**I love you, Ashley Davies.**_

_**And I will for as long as… for all of time, Ashley, until the universe explodes and we are nothing but dust… that's how long I intend to love you.**_

_**Always remember that, even when your day sucks or life seems hard… **_

_**Please know that you are loved.**_

_**And know that leaving you is the last thing I want to do.**_

_**Love,**_

_**Spencer**_

///

TBC


	15. the end is the beginning 3

She stayed up late one night, when she was only five or so, because it was Halloween and all those candy-corns had her wired – her parents door was shut and the lights were off, but she crept downstairs and to the living room.

Turning the television on and sitting there in the flickering glow of dangerous images, Ashley watched her first scary movie – it was the one about a guy with knives for fingers.

And when blood would splatter, she would hide her eyes and pull her knees up until she could burrow into them, her little body shaking.

She had nightmares for weeks after that, of being chased down alley-ways by a menacing man in a striped sweater – but she also had bragging rights at school, braver than all the other girls and cooler than most of the boys.

In the daytime, her boldness got her favorable attention and she loved it.

But at night, alone in her bed, she kept her eyes screwed shut and held her breath… just waiting for the nightmare to become real and swallow her whole.

She didn't ask for a night-light, but she really did want one – something safe to focus on and something bright to keep the darkness away.

Then again, Ashley has always wanted something like that in her life.

Something bright and something safe and something constant, always there when the world grows cold and when people let you down… always there to guide her to slumber or to peace of mind…

Always there to stop the nightmare from becoming real.

Like right now.

Like right this very second.

But what her eyes find as they open slowly is a house she doesn't know and a man she has just met, swimming into focus.

And she thinks that, for just a moment, that what she heard has to be a mistake.

Because she has a letter in her purse and she has a film-loop of memories playing in her head – _blue eyes on a roof-top, a smirk in a parking garage, a kiss in front of a pink tree, arms that held me through the night, walking along the beach with the dawn and running around the park with the evening…_

Ashley remembers things… and touches… and a voice with a woman attached to it… and she couldn't have just made it up.

But Arthur Carlin is looking at her, worried gaze trained on her face and he is holding her hand and he is mentioning 'getting a glass of water'.

And the father of Spencer Carlin couldn't have made up his story either.

And Ashley squeezes her eyes shut once more, so tight that it hurts, and she hopes – just as she did as a child – that when she open them, life will be sorted once more and that there will be this tiny point of light to keep the shadows at bay.

_Please… please… please…_

"Ms. Davies, are you alright? Here, have a sip of this… I am so sorry… so very sorry…"

And her eyes open, wide and terrified and shattered, because now the nightmare is reality.

Arthur Carlin gathers her up, like fathers tend to do, giving comfort over a shared grief.

Ashley, though, just stares ahead and thinks of a beautiful smile on Christmas Day and wonders how it is possible to be completely in love with a girl who is so obviously dead and gone.

_Five years. He said five years. He said they lost her __**five years**__ ago._

And that just breaks her open, setting loose a torrent of sobs as Arthur Carlin holds her in his sure grasp, her tears cascading down her face and soaking into this man's shirt.

And she isn't sure if she is crying for the loss of a woman she swears to know or for her own pummeled sense of sanity… but it is probably both.

/// /// ///

Spencer holds their hands.

And she gives a hug or two, though that is frowned upon. Supposedly it can create a kind of Florence Nightingale effect – the newly deceased, still clinging to their old life and scared of the after-life, could transfer romantic or affectionate feelings to an angel that shows a little too much care.

_Screw that. I could have used a hug when I first got here. One little embrace isn't going to tarnish the pearly gates._

She isn't really sure just how much time has passed, not since her death and not since L.A. – the moments seems to blend into one long day in this subdivision of Heaven, where the sky is always blue up above and various souls wander to the garden to spend eternity with God and his pals.

She's assisted on two more journeys to Earth – 'assisted' being the key word. Spencer notices the looks, sometimes, that other angels give her. You know the kind, vaguely sympathetic and vaguely pitying… they all know that she fucked up on her first time up to bat.

And she guesses those looks are to be seen as kindly and not as a form of judgment.

But Spencer has to struggle not to glare back at them and get confrontational.

_Who are __**they**__ anyway? We are all just angels up here, doing our best… Anyone would think I am the first one to make a mistake or something…_

If any of them were to ask, though, she'd be totally honest.

It wasn't a mistake. None of it was a mistake.

To claim that it was a misstep on her part was to negate her feelings for Ashley and Spencer could never do that, not in a billion years, not for any angel and not even for God.

Every second of her time with the woman is etched along her angelic form – faint and imperceptible scars, from where fingers touched and caressed… from where lips caught and branded… from where love sprung forth and grew like a fire.

Spencer keeps it all within her, like the finest secret or a buried treasure.

And like a kid under bed-sheets, she pulls the memories out when no one else is around and watches them play out – images moving with the flipping of imaginary pages, Ashley Davies brought to life again.

_Who are __**they**__ anyway, right? They don't know a thing about me or how I feel… they don't know what this love is like at all…_

So, Spencer holds their hands.

And she gives a hug or two.

Because Gabe said it was her heart that makes her worthy of being here, that made her the kind of angel that they want, so why should she be the one to change?

_**Exactly**__. _

Michael is the one to break her train of thought, placing a hand on her shoulder.

"Spencer, how are you today?"

"Oh, you know, the usual…"

"That's good. Settling in now?"

"Yea, pretty much."

"That's great."

Spencer eyes him suspiciously, because Michael is never one for idle chit-chat.

_That's more Gabe's style. So I wonder what's going on…_

"Look, um, something has come up and we'd like to talk to you."

"We?"

"Gabriel, Raphael and I."

"Hey, I wasn't the one to eat the last of those German-Chocolate things that lady made, okay? I ate **two**, just like we were told and if it's that guy, Marcus, saying otherwise then—"

"No. It's not about that."

"Oh. Well, **good**, 'coz I didn't eat more than two or anything--"

"**Spencer**."

"Right. Sorry. So, you guys need to talk to me about… what?"

"Follow me."

And so she does, walking into the main office and into a soft argument between Gabe and Raphael, but she only hears the last word or two (_'bad idea'_) before Michael clears his throat and the other two angels grow quiet.

Spencer looks at each of them – Michael and his professional face, Gabe and his slightly concerned gaze, Raphael and his surprisingly serious visage.

So, Spencer does what she does best - she makes a joke.

"Wow, who died?"

That knocks some of the tension away, because Gabe shakes his head (_but I see a smile lurking there…_) and Raphael rolls his eyes dramatically (_which is normal for him anyway, the big queen_).

"Let it be noted that I think this is a very bad idea." Raphael pipes up, crossing his arms.

"Duly noted." Michael says with a nod.

"What's a bad idea?" Spencer asks and there they are once again, looking at her with various expressions – and none of them that positive.

Gabe comes over to her then and rests an arm about her shoulders.

"Spencer, it seems that you are to go to Earth today and, uh, wrap up a certain matter that has come to the attention of some of the higher-ups."

"O…kay. And this is a big deal because…?"

"Well, you will be on your own again for one…"

"That's good news, right? Means I am not the screw up everyone thinks I am."

"Spencer, no one thinks that at all!"

Gabe looks so affronted that it is almost comical and Spencer smiles to take the sting out of her own comment.

_Bitterness isn't pretty, Spencer. Not even on you._

"Fine, fine… okay, so I am going to Earth and on my own, been there and done that… now, why the clandestine meeting in here?"

Gabe is squeezing her shoulder in a friendly manner and Raphael won't meet her eyes, opting to stare hard at the opposite wall – and she gets this feeling, a swirling kind of sensation in her gut, it tickles to the point where she wants to squirm and shake it out of her system... it's not a bad feeling.

But it's not good either.

"The thing is, Spencer, is that… well…"

"Gabriel, perhaps I should tell her?" Michael offers and she is flicking glances between the two of them, this entire interaction taking on more and more strange undertones.

But it is Raphael that decides to cut through the stumbling.

"You have to go back to L.A. and finish things. The letter didn't do it."

Spencer blinks slowly.

And then she does so again.

If she weren't already dead, she thinks she might have keeled over right there in Gabe's arms.

_Go back… to Ashley? Go back to the woman I love more than anything… and then walk away __**again**__? _

"No."

"Spencer—"

"No, Gabe. No **fucking** way. It almost **killed** me to leave her. And now you are telling me that I have to re-do one of the hardest things I've **ever** had to do? No, I can't… I **won't**."

And she spins out of Gabe's hold, storming out of the office and ignores their calling of her name.

She pushes past other angels and ignores their probing looks.

She walks until there is nowhere else to go, leaving her at the edge of this place – close to the garden and God and families reunited and souls at peace… and Spencer wants to tear eternity apart.

_I won't do it, you hear me, God? You can't make me. I cannot go there and see her again and just…__**leave**__! I refuse. You can find someone else. You can send me to Hell. I __**won't**__ go back there._

In all this endless time, where days and nights have no meaning or purpose, she had just started to piece her heart back together – to look on those moments back on Earth with fondness and not just sorrow, to stop crying whenever she thought about Ashley and to actually allow a small smile – and now here they go, wanting to rip even that away.

She hears the footsteps behind her and she expects it to be Gabe, for he is the one who has taken it upon himself to be a mentor of sorts – a shoulder to lean on or weep on, a surrogate father to some degree.

"I don't want to hear it, okay? Just leave me alone."

"Hey, I'm on your side for once."

But it is Raphael's voice that carries out instead. And he offers no shoulder (_that time on Earth must have been a fluke for both of us…_) to steady her. Raphael can always be relied on to offer the truth, good and bad versions.

And Spencer thinks that is all she can handle right about now anyway.

"I think God is an ass." Spencer states, her eyes blankly taking in the manicured dirt path about a hundred yards ahead of her, its grassy borders and then the tall trees further out, always a summer afternoon in God's garden.  
"God works in mysterious ways. I've given up trying to fathom the reasoning and tend to just go with the flow."

"…I can't do it. It's too much to ask."

"Probably so."

"You saw what happened down there… you saw how hard it was for me to walk away and just leave some letter under her door, to just disappear on her…"

"I know."

"And now you guys are telling me it didn't work, that I have to go there and… do what? Actually let her **see** me again? To actually be able to **touch** her again…"

"That sounds about right. Seems that the letter you wrote spurred her into action."

Spencer turns away from the picturesque scene before her and studies Raphael's impassive face.

"What action? What do you mean?"

"She went looking for you."

"…What?"

"Spencer, she **knows**."

"She… knows…? She knows **what** exactly?"

"Let's not play dumb here, okay? She knows that you are dead. The cat is out of bag, so to speak."

Since being in the working section of Heaven, Spencer has felt sadness and some joy – even tiny moments of anger – but nothing much shocks her anymore.

There is a God. There is a Heaven. Homosexuals are all over the garden and television evangelists are still on the waiting list – her shock levels have been tested and not much makes a dent now.

_Except for this. __**This**__ makes a damn dent._

"…How?"

"Your father."

"**What**?"

"She's there now in fact."

"Oh my God…"

"Indeed."

Raphael is suddenly right in front of her and tilting her face upward, soft fingers on her chin.

And she looks back at him rather frozenly, her thoughts stuck on the fact that the woman she loves is with her father… _with one of them thinking I am long gone and the other having just seen me days ago… what a __**fucking**__ mess…_

"No one said it would be easy."

"You got that right."

"But you did want a chance to say a real good-bye, didn't you?"

"…Not like this, no."

"It isn't that things don't go our way, Spencer. Things just go the way they are meant to and we don't always see that."

"I'm meant to continually break my heart and hers?"

"Not quite."

"Then **what**? 'Coz, once again, the master-plan is not real clear to me!"

Raphael smiles at her, bypassing her raised voice, and it reminds her of their time on the pier. Just the two of them, sitting close as the day was dying – a moment of calm before she had to embark on the most difficult task in her entire existence… and, for whatever reason, she takes solace in that memory now.

"You pulled her up from death, Spencer, on that roof. Now you get to pull her fully back to life."

/// /// ///

"Can you tell me about her?"

Neither of them had said a word for quite a while – Arthur Carlin and his glass of water and his hand upon a stranger's back… and Ashley Davies and her mascara-streaked face and wounded stare.

It had been just the ticking of that clock for such a long time, after her tears subsided and his repetition of 'I'm sorry' faded away.

And she ignores the look he is sending her way, the curiosity at such a request.

Because how could she ever explain?

How could she turn to this man, the father of the woman she… _c'mon, Davies, you __**know**__ what it is and not thinking it doesn't make it any less true… _absolutely and totally loves, and tell him her story?

How could she tell this man that the daughter he lost five years ago was in L.A. **three** months ago? And, no, it is not some cruel joke… those pictures by the stairs might be old, but Ashley would know that face anywhere… that is Spencer Carlin along that wall and it was Spencer Carlin in her office.

They are one in the same.

But she can't say that to Arthur Carlin.

_I don't even know why __**I **__believe what I am thinking… I mean, this is insanity, right? How could it be true? But…how could it __**not**__ be true?_

Her eyelids flutter shut and she brings a hand up to her forehead, feeling the start of one hell of headache.

But she opens them once more when Arthur's voice coasts out, all soft with remembrance.

"She was my little girl. I used to really dote on her, much to her brothers' teasing… They said I favored her and… maybe I did, just a bit. But she never used that sentiment to get her way. Spencer wasn't like that… She believed in doing the right thing… Do you know what I mean?"

His eyes shift her way and Ashley gives a barely-there nod, her voice nothing more than a ghost in this house with so many stories – so many tales not her own.

"…I think I do."

He smiles then, turning his gaze elsewhere again, and he keeps talking.

And Ashley keeps listening, soaking up the details of Spencer's life like a sponge – the broken arm from falling out of a tree, a girl full of stubbornness and full of laughter, who didn't listen when a parent told her not to go too high…

_I can relate. I used to do the same sort of things._

Ashley begins to grin just a tad as she hears about frogs in a sink and summers spent camping and hairbrushes used as microphones, as she hears about daydreams shared and childhood passions indulged, as she hears about a girl so full of life that it could blind you… and that's when Ashley's smile drops from her lips.

Because Spencer Carlin is gone.

And Ashley doesn't know what any of this means, not about her mental stability or the state of her heart and she thinks about that letter in her purse… not knowing if it is real or imagined, if the woman who came into her life was real or imagined… if… if…

_I must be crazy. I __**have**__ to be. If Spencer is… dead… then she couldn't have been with me… and yet… and yet… she __**was**__._

The circles start up again in her mind and Ashley cannot stay in this home any longer, standing up abruptly. Arthur Carlin does the same, reaching out to lightly touch her arm.

"Ms. Davies, are you alright?"

"I, uh… no, not really… I think I need to go…"

"I am sorry, again, for the shock. I guess my wife and I thought that most of Spencer's friends knew what had happened."  
"…Of course. That's fine. I am sorry… sorry for intruding like this and for crying all over you…"

"No, no, that's fine. Are you truly alright enough to travel, Ms. Davies?"

"Yes. Yes I am… I… thank you, Mr. Carlin… thank you for taking the time to talk to me."

"Talking about Spencer is never a chore, Ms. Davies… not ever."

And she believes him completely, with his kind eyes and his accepting nature of some unknown woman falling apart in his living room.

She nods quietly, finding whatever energy that propelled her to Ohio sorely lacking now, allowing Spencer's father to guide her to the front door. He pulls her in for one more embrace, tender and caring, and she has to bite her bottom lip to stop a resurgence of tears.

And then she is back outside, walking numbly to her rented car.

She is driving and getting to the airport, but it is all done in auto-pilot – her head a million miles away and her heart twisted and torn.

And she'd give anything for a nightlight right now, to chase away the bad things and keep her from harm.

But Ashley fears that this is just the start of something scary, because her eyes are wide open and it is daytime… and yet, the nightmare is still here.

_I couldn't find you at all, Spencer… I don't even know who it was that kept me from jumping that night… who it was that I fell so hard for… was it even __**you**__, Spencer Carlin?_

/// /// ///

Spencer Carlin is not good at waiting.

Even as a child, with other screaming kids at the dentist's office, she would tap her foot in annoyance.

She'd get through the Highlights magazine. She'd play with whatever toys were there.

But even then, there would always be more waiting.

And it bugged her – because she could be doing far better things.

At least, that is how she always saw it… back then, as a child in a dentist's office.

She still doesn't like waiting much these days.

At least, not on this day.

And yet, there is nowhere else she'd rather be.

So, she stands – no pacing around, but she cannot sit either – and she is rigid by the large window that overlooks the road and stores and people below.

From where she is standing she can see the living room, with its large-screen television and the leather couch and the coffee table. She can see the open-air kitchen and the countertops. She can see just a bit of the bedroom, a corner of the mattress.

Most importantly, Spencer can see the door – the door where Ashley will walk in…

…_and I'll probably freak her out and she might call the cops and she'll think I'm crazy… or that __**she's **__crazy… and I'll curse God. __**Again**__._

And the sunlight is cutting shapes out of shadows on the floor and Spencer had forgotten just how lovely the world is, all the colors and the shifting of time and the sounds and the smells.

Heaven isn't horrible or anything, but it can come off as a bit sanitized.

Earth is overwhelmingly alive.

And she doesn't know how to feel as she is reminded of the fact that she is not a part of this world.

_Only temporarily. Only for a moment. Only to do this one thing and then they'll beam me up._

All those thoughts fly right out of her brain, though, as the door opens and Ashley steps inside.

And Spencer's breath catches in her throat, making an audible gasp in this otherwise quiet apartment.

Because nothing could prepare her for seeing Ashley again, not even all those recollections she held onto and replayed at will.

And those brown eyes turn her way, body unmoving, and the purse that Ashley is holding hits the floor and neither of them are saying anything – they are just staring, wide-eyed and motionless.

Spencer tries to send signals from her head to her mouth, to make it move and speak… but it is like she has gone mute and all the words she wants to say are choking her and all the reasons for being on Earth again are just a lot of white noise in her ears.

"_**Jesus Christ**_…" Ashley ends the stalemate, though, with an unsteady whisper.

And, once again, Spencer tries her darnedest to solve epic issues with minor humor.

"Not exactly… but I do live in the same cul-de-sac as his family."

But as Ashley shuts the door with a trembling hand, Spencer Carlin is fairly certain that nothing about this day will funny… for either of them.

/// /// ///

**TBC**


	16. the end is the beginning 4

Ashley's eyes are wide, white around the irises, and there is this shadow to her face – right around the edges of her mouth, like a frown is hiding there… afraid to show itself, lips afraid to commit to any sort of reaction.

And yet, Ashley stays by the door, hand still resting heavy on the surface – body faced in that direction, like she might bolt at any moment… Only that frozen stare gives the woman away, because it has not faltered at all – it is glued to Spencer.

Spencer tries to command actions again, tries to force her own legs to shift and her own feet to walk.

Or to conjure up her voice once more, to drag words – kicking and screaming – from her mouth… but all she can do is watch Ashley, like bird in a cage, stuck dumb by seeing freedom.

For the bird, it is open air.

For Spencer Carlin, it is Ashley Davies.

"You… can't be here…"

And it is so soft, so tremulous, a cathedral-kind of whisper – only for saints in the pews, only for sinners at the altar – and Spencer hands unclench. She didn't even know that those fingers were fists, holding tightly to her non-movement and her not speaking.

But the silence is broken now and Ashley is stepping away from the door, eyes still glazed and unblinking, footsteps light on the carpeted floor.

"He said… he said… and then I have this letter, this **damn** letter… and you can't **be here**…"

Ashley's body is strung up like a wire, pulled taut and Spencer fears that any wrong move will make the woman topple over, so she remains still.

Or maybe that isn't it at all.

Maybe she just doesn't know how to move. Or speak. Or explain. Or defend.

Maybe Spencer is at a loss and can't even think beyond the person getting steadily closer. Maybe all Spencer can see is the way the afternoon sunlight turns Ashley's skin a golden hue, how it reflects a thousand different things in those almost-frightened brown eyes – disbelief and disillusionment…

_And more, too much more, currents of sorrow and waves of want… too much… there is too much there and I can see it all and… and, God, I don't __**want**__ to see it, but it is all I've longed to see…_

"…Fuck, I've lost my mind… haven't I? I've lost my mind…" Ashley mumbles this and something falls apart in that never-ending gaze – stain glass windows crack and tears spill out and they are only inches from one another now.

And Ashley's arm moves in slow motion. And the touch that graces Spencer's cheek is full of tremors.

And Ashley weeping comes a bit harder now, fingers slipping down and cupping Spencer's jaw.

"…What is going on? What **are** you?"

And Spencer really does try, she honestly swallows down the lump in her throat and attempts to say what needs to be said, all the things running wild in her head and heart and soul – a stampede of emotions and thoughts.

_I'm sorry I couldn't tell you the entire truth. And my letter is still real, that is how I feel… how I __**still**__ feel._

_I'm an angel and there is a God and it's kind of nice up there. But it's boring compared to Earth._

_And I've missed you __**so**__ much. _

_I didn't mean for you to find out about me. I didn't mean to cause you pain._

_I just wanted you to know that I love you._

_And I'm sorry that… I'm sorry that… I'm sorry for so many things._

_Sorry that I am only here to leave you again._

_Sorry that that is all I seem to ever do… all I ever get to do is leave you…_

Instead of words, though, Spencer is tipping forward and Ashley's hand is forced past her skin and into her hair. Instead of explanations, Spencer is pressing her lips to Ashley's and she savors the sweetness there, but she tastes the sadness there, too.

Tearful kisses that blur into one and then three and then more, salt and skin – so basic and pure and Spencer is no longer immobile. She is wrapping around this woman, crossing whatever feeble boundaries they might have and her arms are around Ashley's waist and their legs are pushed against one another.

And Ashley is breathing heavily, bringing up the other hand and holding Spencer's head in place… _drawing me in, devouring me, begging me to answer her in any way possible, to make this real again…_

Instead of talking about leaving, Spencer tries to tell Ashley just how much she wants to stay… with caresses that rush up under Ashley's shirt and with the delicate moan that floats out of Spencer's mouth and with that afternoon sun watching them flutter to the floor…

/// /// ///

Spencer doesn't need to sleep.

And, for once, she is glad for that.

Because if she were asleep, she'd miss this moment… _and that would never do, not at all._

Ashley Davies is the most beautiful woman in the world and it's not just love talking.

Even now, tucked into Spencer's body… _almost like a wayward child_… and lips slightly parted and fine hair all messy… she is gorgeous and Spencer cannot stop looking at her.

_Sleep would just get in the way of a moment like this…_

And Spencer thinks of all the great art, all the comets that shoot across the sky, all the pin-up girls and fashion models – the standards of beauty – and it is nothing compared to the slope of Ashley's neck… how it meets up to those bare shoulders, shoulders that then flood down into strong and tanned arms, the kind of arms that can embrace in tenderness or lift one upwards, propel them to a destination…

Spencer allows her eyelids to close, briefly, because she is already remembering.

Already recalling the way Ashley raised up beneath her, warm flesh exposed and aligned with her own nakedness, the shuddering that they both did at that first full-on contact with one another.

And they kissed because they had to, not just because they so wanted to.

It was everything, right there on the floor of Ashley's apartment, it was everything.

_It __**is**__ everything._

"You're still here."

It is a statement as much as it is a question.

Ashley's voice is hushed and raw, coasting over Spencer's chest. And then the voice is replaced by a kiss, right below her collar-bone, one that doesn't seem to end. That kiss trails along leisurely, though, up the column of Spencer's throat and she is back to feeling more than she ever has – five points along her side, hot fingertips so sure and steady… heat bouncing back from Ashley's naked skin to her own… the entanglement of legs, subtle pressure that speaks of the best kind of intimacy – casually perfect, easy and without force, the kind of touches that mean _'I am yours'_…

And Spencer can't help it, for it comes so quickly and so eagerly, tripping out of her right before Ashley's tongue moves languidly into her mouth.

"I am yours…"

And she means it. She means it more than anything. She says it because it is true – it is the only truth she has ever known.

_But… that's not all, is it? This is not why you are here at all…_

Spencer shoves that aside, though.

Because Ashley tastes so good and Ashley feels so good and… _this is __**so**__ right, so amazing…_

Ashley's weight tilts them both to the side, arms coiled about one another, and Spencer feels every inch of where they meet – a knee going up and another knee pushing down, the settled feeling of Ashley's stomach pressing against her own, the way they don't stop kissing… on the chin, below the ear, endless seconds on the cheek…

Spencer pretends that she is a sculptor, shaping Ashley's shoulder blades – how they curve and shift downward, how they open like wings.

And she follows the highway of Ashley's spine, downhill and smooth and then flaring up again at the small of the woman's back… and how it arcs, how it flattens, how it ripples every time their hips rock into each other… forming a masterpiece from clay, that's how Spencer captures this in her mind, molding and kneading and… and…

…_breathing and groaning and sliding and oh so wet… oh so warm… oh so lovely…_

Forehead to forehead, the afternoon dwindling down to evening and dusk is catching so prettily in Ashley's eyes… _eyes no longer wide… eyes with so many hours worth of agony in them, agony and confusion and lust and love…_

And Spencer knows that her own gaze holds the same.

She feels the blue leak out and down the sides of her face. She feels those shards of her barely-healed heart flake apart and blow away in the wind.

She feels it slamming into her like a cannonball and it sucks away all the air.

"I'm in love with you…"

And this time it is a statement, albeit a wounded one – battered where it should be brand new, defeated where it should be championed. Yet the words barrel the breath back into Spencer's dead lungs, just like Ashley's life has given her after-life more meaning than she ever could have thought possible.

And Raphael's comment comes back to her as she lazily brushes her palm over Ashley's face, memorizing the contours and cataloging the sensations such a simple act causes in her own body.

"_**You pulled her up from death, Spencer, on that roof. Now you get to pull her fully back to life."**_

_That's what it has all been about, at the end of the long day, hasn't it? She woke me up and showed me something special, gave me a glimpse of something I never had when I was alive… and it is a far greater gift than maybe I deserve… but she gave it… she gave it all to me…_

And Spencer wants to save Ashley Davies.

It's what she is meant to do.

It was never New York or girlfriends on the go, it was never meandering jobs and that city apartment, it was never school and grades and calls home on Sunday… it was never that bike or those lonely days after coming out… it was never any of those things, though she cherishes them… though they helped create her..

But the day she stepped out of the subway car and she started falling, with those profound questions rattling in her head, that's when she got another chance at really living.

_You really do work in mysterious ways, don't you, God?_

Spencer hugs the woman above her, hugs her fiercely and with abandon. And Ashley holds her tightly and Spencer can feel the shivering of weeping in the woman's bones and she knows the time has come… _to do what I was born to do and what I died to do…_

Spencer pulls back and cradles Ashley's face. She sends out a vaguely wobbling smile, which is timidly returned.

"I'm in love with you, too."

"…I know…"

"Good, 'coz it is true. I've never loved **anyone** the way I love you. You have brought me such joy, more than I've ever known…"

Ashley takes a deep breath and lets her head go down, resting solidly on Spencer's chest.

"…I don't know how you are even here."

"I'm an angel."

Ashley's body reverberates with the tiniest of chuckles and Spencer grins into the woman's hair.

"What?"

"Aren't angels supposed to be… virginal?"

"They must have made a mistake with me. Every time I look at you, my thoughts turn decidedly devilish."

"…I've noticed."

Ashley's hand starts to slide up and down over Spencer's ribs, causing them both to release twin sounds of contentment – one like a purr, the other like a pleasant shock.

"You **feel **real."

"As do you."

"I've not… made you up?"

"If you have, please keep doing so."

The hand stops grazing and comes to a halt, perching on Spencer's hip as if waiting for the other shoe to drop – a pregnant pause.

"I talked to… well, it was your father… I guess…"

"I know."

"You do?"

"One can see a lot from, uh, up there."

"…Oh."

Ashley gradually moves away, bit by bit, first the hand and then the legs and then the head from Spencer's chest.

And Spencer feels slightly bereft at Ashley's retreat, but knows that this is a part of it all – part of this overwhelming rescue mission, this opportunity to give back what has been so freely given.

"You're… dead."

And Ashley is watching her, beautiful body now sitting up, curling inward like it needs protection.

And Spencer, this time, meets the woman head-on.

Where she was once locked down by what she thought she was losing, she is now unbound by what she has gained.

Is it all as she wishes? Not totally. Is it the happy ending that came with every fairy tale in her childhood? Not really, no…

But it is real – as real as the floor they sit on and as real as the love they made and as real as Spencer being deceased…

_As real as Ashley Davies still being alive and well. As real as Ashley Davies, naked and breathing and existing._

"Yes, I am."

Ashley's tears are frequent after that and Spencer wipes them away.

Ashley's heart sort of shatters and Spencer places her hand where it beats so she can catch the pieces as they tumble.

And they are hugging again, as if they never let go in the first place

Perhaps they never really did.

/// /// ///

Conversation is sporadic and if questions come, they are asked so quietly – as if a raised voice will break the mirage they have built… in this apartment that is growing increasingly dark, the two of them halfway dressed and standing in each other's orbit… circling and circling, the gravity of their need still so strong.

But mostly they are silent, a head on a shoulder or the faint tug on the hem of a shirt.

Mostly, they are just there with the other – because that is what they will lose once this day ends.

It won't be talk and it won't be jokes that they must forsake.

It won't be idle chit-chat that Ashley will dream about or that Spencer will recollect.

It will be this, the way they fit together without having to work at it, bodies that have never been foreign lands to one another… _not really_.

It will be this love that they hold onto as the bonds get stretched and time ticks forward and as life moves faithfully on… _as it must, as it should be_…

Stars can't be seen from this part of L.A. and the moon is just a sliver of silver-white in the sky and Spencer knows that she has to go soon, has to walk away for the last time and set this woman truly free.

And so she kisses Ashley's palm and then presses it to her cheek.

"You asked me once why I stopped you that night and I told you that a world without you in it wouldn't be right… And in that letter I told you again, I told you just **how much** you are worth… So, don't you dare forget it, Ashley Davies, don't you **dare**… You've got a life **so** worth living… so worth living…"

Ashley struggles to nod her head in fragile compliance, teeth clamping down on her bottom lip and a familiar shimmering to those brown eyes that cannot be hidden by the nighttime.

And Spencer turns into that hand upon her face, shuts her eyes in reverence and allows a smile.

"I'll always be yours, Ashley Davies… Always yours..."

Ashley draws near then, bringing their lips together in a kiss so yielding and vulnerable, heavy with all those things they have spoken and all those things they'll never get to say.

A kiss filled with acceptance, one that Spencer will carry back to Heaven proudly.

"Thank you for saving me…" Ashley whispers, writing the words to the corner of Spencer's mouth, all cursive and fine, tears coating the letters.

And good-bye has never been this bittersweet… as Spencer walks to the door and as Spencer finishes what she started… She saves Ashley Davies.

For a father that made mistakes and wants a second chance.

For a sister that is only a phone-call away.

For a mother who can still be forgiven.

For that old guitar that could be played and for lyrics that can be sung.

For all the affection that is still there to be displayed, to be shared…

For all those reasons and a million more, Spencer Carlin was sent to save Ashley Davies.

_I saved Ashley Davies one step at a time, on the rooftop and in the park and upon this floor… saving Ashley Davies for a world that needs her more than the woman can ever comprehend… saving Ashley for the sake of Ashley…_

And Spencer Carlin can't think of a better reason to have died.

/// /// ///

_**Did you live well? Did you help others? Did you live up to your potential? Are you, or have you ever been, content with the life you've had thus far?**_

Spencer shuts the door and enters that blinding light… but this time, she has the answers to these ponderings… this time, Spencer knows just what to say.

_Yes. Yes to all of the above._

/// /// ///

**::END::**

**Epilogue forthcoming… **


	17. epilogue

Ashley Davies wrote her first song on a rainy afternoon, sitting behind the locked door of her bedroom, at the age of fifteen.

And she supposes, in this day and age, it would be considered an 'emo' kind of tune – scratched out lines and angry scrawls, wounded words from a broken girl.

She didn't give it a title and she never sang it out loud, but it played to an audience of one every day and every night – in her drunken stupors, which were becoming more frequent, and in the shouts around the house between her and her mother… between her and Kyla…

That song was everywhere in Ashley's life, lyrics wrapped around her body so tightly that she could barely breathe. And she never had to sing it because she lived it.

It was around the age of twenty-one or twenty-two that she put those things away, things like dissatisfied longings and music-tinted dreams, preferring to drown her weekends in torridness and bury her days in law school.

And in a box she knew all too well, she kept those mementos of a life unlived – kept them close enough to be envied and far enough away to fake forgetfulness.

Until tonight, when she curls her halfway dressed body on the floor of her bedroom and pulls on that box with tired hands. Until tonight, when she flips open the pages and scans the tortured phrases and wishes she could hold the girl she used to be… tell that girl that everything will be alright, one day… one day, everything will right itself and she can start over…

_One day, a stranger will come into your life and save you… and you'll live again._

She cries until there are no tears left inside, crying for all she left behind and all she tried to deny… crying for a woman she never knew and crying for a love never fully realized… crying because she is thankful… crying because she is, for the first time in a long while, glad to feel her heart beating solidly in her chest.

_Shattering, but real. Hurting, but alive. Battered… but not broken…_

And she'll never be a lawyer again. She'll never step foot into an air-conditioned high-rise, full of 9-to-5 stiffs and suits. She'll never use that degree in its frame, with its gold seal and her name in ink, again.

And she'll buy a new notebook. She'll go out and buy a new guitar, it'll be blue and lacquered and the strings will feel like joy against her fingers. She'll write new songs, not so much about sadness, but about redemption and wonderful pain and love.

But for tonight, after she sits the past down and her face dries, Ashley Davies crawls into her bed and turns out the light and stares out the window. And she tries to see the stars beyond the smog, tries to see the moon instead of the streetlights… tries to see just where beautiful angels slip away for good, a rift in the black skies where all good souls go, and Ashley watches until she reluctantly falls asleep.

/// /// ///

They say that there used to be a loom on which fate was weaved, incandescent and magical ribbons of a person's life forever tended to and nurtured along, creating the fabric of one's existence.

Maybe a piece was too long or too short, once upon a time, but it soon gets sorted – placed back on the correct path and merging seamlessly with all your other lines, all your colors and all your patterns… going and going until the day you pass on.

It's a pretty idea. It's a nice thought that your life can be seen as a work of art and not a mess of separate bits of intention, single strings of time… _you are not just the sum of your parts, you are a whole entity…_

She guesses it is getting older that makes her think like this.

Getting older and becoming calmer and all those things that she feared as a teenager – well, now they are true and now they are reality.

Ashley did just as she set out to do, all those long years ago.

She gave up the lawyer game and started writing songs again and she got her scared ass up on local stages to sing whispering words… and right there, at the first table she could see, was her father.

Big and beaming smile on his face, his tie and slacks making him stand-out against all these pompous coffee students and faux-fashion plates, but that is the only person she needed to look upon.

And she sang like she meant it. And everyone in there could hear it in her voice. And when they clapped, it was a nice sound… but when her father hugged her tightly and murmured a _'well-done, well-done'_ in her ear, that was the best thing she had ever heard.

And that little girl inside of her finally got her hug, too.

The next time around, she invited Kyla – their conversation stumbling over all the years where they stopped being sisters and contented themselves with being acquaintances – and so Ashley didn't expect her to show up.

And there was that table, with her father still front and center. And there are those patrons in their expensive clothes, trying to look casually hip and aware and failing.

But, lingering by the entrance, Ashley caught a glimpse of familiar brown eyes and she smiled into the microphone and she sang a bit louder.

From that day forward, they talked more and they apologized for losing touch and they made a vow to not make the same mistake twice – Kyla, with her still shy grins and her warm hand against Ashley's back as they embrace… and Ashley wished she had not pulled so far away, wished she could have been there for her sister when times got rough… and that she could have let Kyla be there for her, too.

But Ashley has learned that wishing gets you nowhere.

It just takes away from the here and now.

_And the here and now is all you've got, so make the most of it… right, Davies?_

Her mother couldn't get over the things that once made sense, the family that once was still large in her mind and obscuring her view of the family that was still right there.

And Ashley still calls her mother. And Ashley still cares about her. And Ashley keeps the woman in her heart always, faded photographic memories of soft fingers that wiped away errant tears and the gentle tug of pig-tails as lips kissed a little girl good-night… Her mother is still there, loved by a grown-up Ashley, whether the woman ever answers or not.

And Ashley can live with that.

She can live with that and with bad days and with rude people and with humid weather and with moments of loneliness and with harsh words that still pop up and with everything that comes with being alive.

Because, even after all these years, Ashley has not forgotten a promise made one night - long ago - in an apartment that she no longer lives in, as the day left and the night drifted down, a promise made with skin and with desire… with devotion and with determination…

_I made a promise to you, Spencer. I hope you can see just how well I am living this life you gave back to me… _

She didn't tell anyone about it, not for a very long time. And when she finally did speak of Spencer Carlin, it was to her father and it was sparingly – for he was the only one who also knew of the woman and had felt some of her impact, his voice speaking of blue eyes that froze him to the spot on which he stood and how he knew that _'that girl really cared about you, Ashley… she really did, you could see it…'_

And she agreed, nodding softly, staring at her clasped hands. And just like that, she could taste Spencer's mouth and she could feel Spencer's body against her own, like it was only yesterday.

There were many hours where Ashley missed the woman, wanted to open her eyes in the morning and find Spencer returned – in her arms, in her bed, in her world.

But, slowly and gradually, Ashley set even that daydream free from her hold.

Not from her heart, never from there, because the love runs too deep to just end like that… _but time moves on and the heart mends and you wake up one day… you wake up and think that maybe, just maybe, you still have some affection left to give to someone… _

And Spencer taught her to believe in things like that, things like second chances and worthiness.

Spencer taught her how to love again, how to open the gates to her soul and let someone in.

Spencer taught Ashley everything.

_She taught me how to save myself…_

And so Ashley does all she sets out to do.

She isn't a lawyer. She is a singer in tiny clubs and barely gets paid.

She lives in a house on the beach, one that needs constant work and she tries her hand at carpentry… and she sucks at it.

Kyla is always over, cooking dinners and complaining about boyfriends. They laugh a lot with one another. They curl up on the couch and watch bad horror films.

Her father is always calling, bugging her about performances and offering to buy her a band, which she always declines. They meet up and have lunch a lot, the two of them sipping their beers in exactly the same way.  
Her mother calls on the holidays and still doesn't understand why Ashley let all that good money go, but they still stay _'I love you'_ as each conversation ends. And this time, Ashley really means it.

She's made some real friends, people she can talk to about anything and they know they can talk to her, too. She's gone out on blind dates, some of which were laughably awful and some which were surprisingly good.

And every night, Ashley Davies goes to bed – sometimes alone, sometimes not – but… like the Billy Joel song goes… she always wakes up with herself.

It is her face in the mirror at the dawn of the every day and that sight is no longer a disappointment.

It is just perfect.

And it'll be perfect until the end of her days.

/// /// ///

"Well, well, well… this is certainly a **big** day for you, hmm?"

Raphael's voice is at that recognized level of somewhere between genuine affection and usual bitchiness, like he can never decide whether to be kind to her or to trip her.

_If he wasn't such a flamer I'd say he has been hitting on me all this time._

And normally Spencer would jump to the bait – in fact, she'd hop to it happily, enjoying their strange slightly antagonistic banter most times.

But not today… for today, as the other angel so aptly put it, is a 'big day'.

And, to be blunt, Spencer is kind of nervous.

_Kinda? Let's be up front, Carlin… you are freaking out._

Because, after all this time, she is leaving this section of Heaven and going to the garden – _God's garden… with __**God**__ in it._

"You gonna miss us little angels over here?" Raphael asks with a smirk.

"All of them but you."

"How you wound me, Spencer." But it is said so aloofly that it just makes Spencer grin despite her jittery hands and feet, the parts of her that just won't stay still as she is left to meander about all day until she is 'sent' for

_That waiting thing? Yea… still not so good at it…_

And, admittedly, she's had little time to just sit around over the past… _what's it been now? Decades? Eons?_

Time moves funnily in Heaven. One second could be years. A minute could be a lifetime up here and you wouldn't know it… and, the longer you are around, you stop trying to count the moments.

You just exist in them.

And Spencer has done just that – bouncing from the clouds to the ground, over and over, reaching out to millions of souls and hoping that they reach back… hoping to wipe away their desperation and stop them from drowning… Spencer Carlin, not in a red cape or tights, but still working out how to be an angelic Superman.

And when it works out, it is lovely. And when it doesn't, it still hurts.

And when there is no one for her to save, she talks to other angels – about the lives they used to have, about the lives they rescue now.

And when it is quiet, _which is rare_, she thinks about a woman in L.A. and tries to picture what that woman is doing and Spencer will – inevitably – touch her fingers to her lips and remember.

Only it doesn't kill her now to do so.

It just feels comforting and sweet and nice. It is hazy around the edges now, fuzzy with old heat and sturdy love… something neither time nor distance has disrupted, but just made finer.

"Spencer!" Gabe exclaims happily and pulls her into an embrace, one that she returns with real affection. Because this is who she'll miss the most, the one who scooped up so many of her tears (_over dying, over Ashley, over everything_) and helped her smile again and taught her what it means to be an angel.

He squeezes her tighter and she chuckles just a bit.

"It's a good thing I don't **really** need to breathe…"

Gabe quickly steps back, but doesn't fully remove himself – keeping an arm about her shoulders.

"Oh, sorry. Guess I am just excited for you. Aren't you excited?"

"Totally."

"I am so **proud** of you!"

"Whoa, Gabe, breaking out one of the seven sins? Just for me? Thanks."

And she winks and he nudges her playfully, shaking his head.

"Don't fill her head up anymore than it already is, Gabriel." Raphael pipes up and Spencer childishly sticks her tongue out, to which Gabe laughs joyfully.

And it hits her then, that she will miss this – miss this arm around her shoulder, miss these caring words from Gabe and even Raphael's snarky comments… she'll miss what it is like to see a grateful smile spring up on a human's face and the glow of someone who no longer wants to run away from being alive and that she played a part in that… she'll miss all these conversations with other angels, learning about them and helping them adjust… she'll even miss Michael, though they are not that close…

Spencer will miss all of this just as much as she once missed New York.

But in all this time, she's learned a few things too.

Like how to just be, how to let go, how to accept and how to move on… like how deep the heart can feel, how easy a soul can be wounded, how fragile everything truly is…

And as much as she once missed her life down there on Earth, she knew – that last night in L.A. – that her life had to end in order to save another.

And as much as she will miss this particular place in Heaven, she knows that the garden has just been waiting for her… as steadfast as her death, as fatefully as meeting Ashley… waiting for the moment when Spencer Carlin was ready to move forward again.

_Fate is such a strange thing, always getting us back on course… I suppose that is you, isn't it, God? Guess I'll get to ask you all about it soon enough…_

"What's in the garden besides God?" Spencer asks aloud softly and with Gabe's body still pressed to her side. And she can feel his eyes on her, but she keeps her gaze distant, almost like it will help her hear his answer better.

And he briefly grips her shoulder before his voice coasts out, just as softly as her query.

"All the elements of your peace, all the shades of your divinity and all the love you have given."

And Spencer smiles, just a little, wrapping her arm about Gabe's waist and leaning into him.

"Well… that doesn't sound too bad then…"

/// /// ///

There are murmurs of congratulation and smiles and hand-shakes.

She hugs some of the new ones – much to Michael's patient chagrin – and they hug her back, whispering words of thanks and of happiness for her.

And Michael is there, patting her shoulder. It is the closest to a sentimental gesture that the angel has ever shown to her and Spencer takes it all in stride, smiling up at him.

"Any parting advice?" She asks jokingly, those nerves still there and still persistent in her gut.

"Enjoy your reward, Spencer Carlin. You have earned it."

And it hits her then – she won't be back to this place again. Ever.

And suddenly she is crying.

She knows it isn't sorrow in those tears, but it is not elation either.

It is just something in-between and she doesn't try to stop them from falling down her face.

Gabe is next and he is hugging her like always, rubbing her back and soaking up her tears… _like always_… and she hugs him back, getting all these overlapping flashes of Gabe's face and her father's face, as if they were the same being somehow.

And Gabe's lips press lightly to her forehead and he cups her face and…

_He looks just like my father, in the eyes and around the mouth and… __**everywhere**__… like my father is right here, in front of me…_

And Gabe smiles at her knowingly, like he is imparting a secret with his gaze, and she is just getting it… just realizing all that truly awaits her in that garden.

Raphael is the last one – right by the door she will soon walk out of, raising one eyebrow at her tear-stained face as if to say _'and you call me dramatic?'_

But he beckons her to come closer and so she moves towards him and he lowers himself so that they are eye-to-eye.

"Spencer Carlin, you've been a real pain in my ass."

"L-Likewise…" She stutters out, still sobbing but not wanting to give him the satisfaction of verbally besting her.

'_Coz this will be the last time we get to do this… can't let him think he will win or anything…_

"And here you are, going to garden while I still have to bust my chops with the mortals… you know that is completely **wrong**, don't you?"

"So is y-your fashion sense, b-but you don't hear me complaining do you?"

And Raphael grins so wickedly it could make one wonder how he ended up in Heaven at all.

It brings up a matching grin on her face as well, slowly pushing the weeping away for good.

And Spencer remembers that Raphael has seen her at her worst, at her most broken.

And instead of making it worse, he made it bearable.

Instead of judging her, he shared his own story with her… and they were not so different from each other at all.

And maybe it will be this angel that she will miss most of all, the one placing a chaste kiss to her cheek and tugging lightly on a strand of her hair, with his mirthful eyes and upturned lips.

"Stop with the water-works, girl. You're about to get it all. **Some** of us have to get up in the morning and work…"

"**You**? **Work**? That'll be the day."

Raphael's grin widens and he grabs her shoulders, turning her toward the door and standing at her back.

And his voice wafts into her ears, sounding ten-times more assured than she feels.

"Out there, Spencer, is all your dreams come true."  
"… I've got a lot of dreams, Raphael…"

_Sunshine. Laughter. My father. My mother. Glen and Clay. Friends I've never forgotten. And Ashley… I have __**so**__ many dreams about Ashley… how can each and every dream come true for me?_

But Raphael just chuckles right by the side of her head.

"Wow, Carlin, you've been here **too** long haven't you?"

"What do you—"

"Just go and be happy, sweetheart… just go and be **happy**."

The door opens and she steps through silently… and when she turns around, there is nothing there.

No building with a missing ceiling. No group of angels in a long hallway.

It is just grass and sky and trees for as far as the eye can see.

And Spencer looks down to the path that her feet are upon, knowing that it is now or never…

…once again, it is time to face the great unknown and let what came before go.

/// /// ///

If you are a mortal, you have to just be patient – which is pretty easy to do in the garden.

Not that you don't miss the loved ones yet to join you… but there is so much to do and see, any and all things that occur in your head can be chased down with glee.

Want to climb a mountain? Go for it. Want to talk philosophy with noted scholars from every age? You've got plenty of time to do so.

Want to kiss the keeper of your heart for hours? By all means...

You know how they say that governments should be run **by** the people and not the other way around? Well, see, Heaven gets that right… whereas governments and people rarely do.

Heaven is exactly what you make it to be – that's part of the pleasure of ending up there and mortals, once they've acclimated, tend to forget about Earth.

They forget all the trials and tribulations, all the worries and the hardships, they forget about governments that never change and about wars that never end.

In the garden, mortals get a constant taste of paradise.

If you are an angel, though, getting to the garden is that much sweeter.

Angels spend all their time in service to others, usually plucked from life before their time, and all the things that mortals get to partake in… well, angels can only watch from the sidelines… close to the sea, but unable to touch it… near the stars, but never able to reach that high…

It can be difficult. It can be daunting. It can test one's spirit.

But, if you are an angel and you make it to the garden… Heaven is everything you never got to have.

Not so much missed opportunities as they are new ones, placed at your feet and right there for your hands to hold, bathed in the same light that snatched you from Earth… and now it is the light that carries you home.

In the garden, angels get to be free.

/

Spencer Carlin swallows hard, because something is about to shift and she knows it – the sensation runs along her spine, like electric waves, and without fully knowing why… she is looking around almost frantically, as if there are faces just waiting for her to see them.

In the midst of all these souls, Spencer is looking for the ones she knows – and as if her thoughts conjured them up – there they are.

After so very long, there they are, wiped clean of whatever age they might have been at their passing… a bit younger than she's ever seen, black-and-white photographs in an album that she and Glen once looked through… but it is them, fresh and smiling and darting past everyone just to get to her.

And Spencer is no longer searching. She is running.

She is running toward her parents… and she can feel the muscles in her legs, really feel them, as they pump her forward. She can feel blood rushing in her veins, the heat of life – almost foreign to her now – flowing in her body.

And she can feel the air against her face. And she can smell the heady scent of summer. And she can hear her own breathing, the pounding of it in her ears.

And it is glorious.

Her father's arms are around her and her mother is kissing her head and Spencer never wants to let them go… so she doesn't, because here – in the garden – she doesn't have to.

The three of them cry, but the tears are not heavy and the tears are not dark.

They cry tears of joy, holding onto each other and smiling and laughing and talking over one another.

They trade stories, of life on Earth and of life in the stratosphere, of time spent here in the garden and of time spent being a savior. And each time her parents look at her, Spencer soaks in their warmth – the way their eyes never truly leave her, the way they take her in like she is something so special.

"How much time has really passed?" She asks and her father furrows his brow, doing some silent counting.

"It's been so long, Spencer… we've been here for a good while now, a good while…"

"Wait… does that mean that—"

"Oh yes, they are here." Her mother cuts in, nodding with a pleased grin.

And Spencer's smile threatens to split her face as she stands up quickly, once again scanning through the crowd of souls and she is engulfed again by the swarm of feeling in her body – the flood of almost reckless abandon in her movements and the tiny yell of excitement as her brothers come into view… picking her up and spinning her around, hugging and teasing each other like they had never been apart.

"Married? **Both** of you? I mean, I could see Clay getting married, but **Glen**?"

"Hey!" Glen exclaims with a grin.

And they all laugh and Spencer meets this whole new wave of her family and it is everything she could have imagined… _and more, so much more_… all right here, all in her grasp.

And she can feel it, the thrill of contentment through her bones.

_And it is damn near perfect._

There is more talking and joking and more embracing, but she feels a firm tug on her hand.

And her father is motioning with his eyes for her to follow, so she does… the two of them stepping away from the group and his hand is steady on her lower back as they walk.

"There's one story I forgot to tell you… can I tell it to you now?"

And Spencer manages a slow nod, getting that feeling again, the one that tells her that things are about to alter and change… that the circle of her very existence is going to finally be complete, that all the turning is now through and all the loose threads are about to be sewn together…

…_and I am __**so**__ ready for it to happen._

And she hears about a girl who showed up in Ohio years and years and years ago, a girl looking for Spencer Carlin as if Spencer Carlin were still alive. A girl with brown eyes and brown hair, whose face cracked with sadness when she found out that Spencer Carlin had died.

A girl named Ashley Davies, a girl that Spencer's father never forgot… _'And so, when I looked up one day and saw that girl here – in the garden…'_

_Here. In the garden. She's here. She's… __**here**__…_

"She's been waiting for you, too." Her father says lightly into her ear, but she can barely hear him. She can barely hear a thing over the beating of her heart – the thundering boom-boom-boom in her chest and how it is echoing into every part of her, making it as hard to stand as it is to breathe.

And Spencer sees her as if in slow-motion, the faltering step – the kind that one takes when you just aren't sure if what you are seeing is truly there or not – and then the steps become fluid again, sure and hurried, faster and faster… and Spencer realizes that her own feet are moving as well, sidestepping and speeding past all others, eyes never blinking as the other woman gets closer.

_And closer still._

_And closer still._

And this time, they won't stop… _because we don't have to, not ever again_.

This time, Spencer Carlin winds her hands up the sides and onto the shoulders and into the hair, pulling Ashley Davies lips to her own… and this time, Ashley's body is flush against her, like it has always meant to be, and those arms are possessing her, wrapping around her a hundred times over… and this time, they kiss without ceasing, on the neck and along the face and upon the hands…

And they tremble and shake and their foreheads are pressed together and they stare at each other – they stare until all others have moved on and Spencer's parents are resting and her brothers are with their wives and every single star in the universe comes out to witness their reuniting…

"Tell me you are really here."

"I'm really here."

"For good?"

"For good."

"Spencer Carlin…"

And blue meets brown. And lips gently caress. And they lower quietly to the ground, the soft grass below them and the endless sky above. And the strands of their hair mingle and mix. And the touches they bestow are so… _perfect, so damn perfect…_

And everything is heightened. Each subtle pressure and each tender bite, bringing forth ripples of pleasure and gratification, all in the shared gasps and mirrored moans of their collision.

And Spencer feels white-hot, like a flame, and she dig her nails into Ashley's back and they fall at the same time… they fall and fall and fall… together.

_Forever._

/

"…_**I love you more than you could ever know."**_

"_**Oh, I think I have an idea."  
"Yea?"**_

"_**Yea."**_

"_**Ready to spend eternity proving it?"**_

"…_**More than ready, Ashley… more than ready…"**_

/// /// ///

**::FIN::**

**Well, there you go. Hope you like it. Thanks for all the reviews for this fanfiction – really appreciate it.**


End file.
